The Fearful Void
by EarthScorpion
Summary: She was a very disturbed child. Terrible, debilitating nightmares. Hallucinations. Hysteria. She never had a chance at a normal life. But now at least Louise has a chance to summon a beautiful and powerful familiar at the Springtime Summoning Ritual. And somewhere else, a seven year old girl cries for release. Contains scenes of a disturbingly moe/disturbing nature
1. Chapter 1

**The Fearful Void - Part 1**

The light rain drizzled down on this soggy spring morning. The grey-painted sky was pale, but the rain did not cease. It was not a proper rainstorm, but merely a melancholy dusting of water which made the lives of the teenagers in their oilskin coats miserable. And on an already tense event, with nerves running high, there was a low level buzz of worried chatter.

"I hope this doesn't throw the elemental alignment out of balance."

"Yes, yes, I heard that it's bad luck if you can't see blue sky."

"Only makes sense, right? The weather's skewed towards water and wind, and... Founder, I'd like a nice warm fire right now. But what if this weather interferes with my summoning?"

"I don't see a problem." That was Montmorency, a blonde water mage who not only had an invisible shell over her which the water ran off, but had nothing to fear from an elemental imbalance towards water. If one was to ask some of the people in her class, she was a cold wet fish already.

"Children." The balding teacher in the hooded cloak raised his voice. "The weather has no effect on the efficiency or effectiveness of the summoning ceremony. Trust me on this, I have looked through all the archives, and there is no increased rate of failure related at all to the weather at the time. You will do fine." He paused. "All of you. I believe all of you are ready for this, and will be able to take this important step in your development as mages."

The one teenager who the others felt this comment was directed more at huddled up deeper into her cloak, and shivered. Her red eyes swept the field, flicking from face to face. Unlike her peers, she was not reassured by the statement that the weather did not affect the rate of summoning successes. For Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière, the announcement that she could not even blame the weather, a chill seasonal inclemency drifting in off the Great Northern Sea, was not a good sign.

She was filled with the fear of failure, and it gnawed at her. Within her heart, it grew and grew, as mage-child after mage-child bought forth their chosen companion. Birds and frogs and burning salamanders and even a wind-dragon. Inwardly, she bemoaned the alphabetical order of the surnames which left her last, and tried to suppress a yawn. Her sleep had been even more disrupted for the last week than usual, as the worry about the Spring Summoning Ritual consumed her life.

Around her feet, as she fretted, the green grass withered and died, a deep red glow only visible right at the edge of vision highlighting each doomed strand of grass. The girl glanced down, and screwed her eyes shut. No. She had to keep calm. Deep breaths. Deep slow breaths. Inhale for seven seconds. Hold for seven seconds. Release. Inhale for seven seconds. Hold for seven seconds. Release. Repeat.

After a while, she chanced a peak down at the ground around her. No one had noticed, and the glow was gone. That was good. She had to stay calm. Magic user without a wand or chanting was an incredibly rare, potent skill in theory. Louise had never understood that. She longed for the control that other people seemed to have unconsciously. _They _didn't have to worry about hurting the things around them in uncontrolled explosions. _They_ didn't get the headaches or the bad dreams._ They_ didn't wreck rooms when they got angry, or hurt people when they miscast magic, or kill their beloved pony when they were trying to get even a single spell to work in the stables at home, or kill...

She gulped down air, and began the breathing exercise again. She could feel the onset of another headache coming, a pulsing pain behind her temples, and she merely prayed to God and Founder and whoever would hear her that this would be a mild one, that she wouldn't be incapacitated by this. Her mother got headaches like this, too, and Cattleya had them even worse, to the extent that she had not even been able to attend the Academy. Some days, when the bullying and loneliness got too bad, she envied her big sister.

"Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière." That was Professor Colbert's voice, the teacher calling out over this rain-sodden field. She opened her red eyes again, and shuffled out of the circle of dead grass, ignoring the mutter of voices around her. It was all right, as long as she couldn't hear them. Especially since when she started getting her headaches, the sound of her heartbeat in her ears sounded like voices, and she had learned years ago not to snap at people whispering on the chance that they might not be real.

She wiped her eyes - it was just the rain, she wasn't crying really - and drew her wand out from under her oilskin cloak. This was it. The circle was prepared, and now all she had to do was cast this spell. This one last spell. This most important spell of her life.

"P-pentacle of the Five Elements," she began, voice shaking as the pain behind her eyes spiked like it had seldom done before.

_it's coming clear... yes, look at these anomalous ECG and EEG readings_

_mummy, please, help. it hurts._

"... bring before... somewhere... bring before my... m-my," she continued, her words tripping over themselves as a red corona filled her blurry vision, and the whispering flooded her ears.

_i don't want to be here_ _what's this? _

_doctor, i... i don't know what this is_

"... somewhere in the universe is a beautiful and powerful familiar!" Louise screamed over the pain. "Bring it to me!"

There was shouting in the background, something from Professor Colbert and the others in her class, but she could not hear them. Would not hear them. In front of her, was the familiar portal, although it was... wrong. Where there should have been a smooth elegant green oval, the world itself bent, as if it was seen through invisible water. The portal itself was a jagged tear, a morbid reddish-black that rippled and crinkled, and the air around it swirled in an anti-cyclone, whipping Louise's clothes around and pelting her with suddenly-warm rain.

_it's all coming. the earth will tear itself apart and the blood of thousands will be shed and the fields will run red and cities will be laid to waste.  
it's their revenge._  
_sins of the father._

Something emerged, a pale hand - small, delicate - and as the rest of its body followed through Louise's eyes rolled back in her head, and she fainted.

* * *

_A's Ns:  This is to a certain extent an experimental fic, where I play around with much shorter chapter lengths and a faster update cycle which can be carried out in parallel with other fics. Yes, shocking isn't it; chapters which are chapter-length, rather than novellas._


	2. Chapter 2

**The Fearful Void - Part 2**

Professor Colbert's warning went unheard, and his knuckles whitened around his staff at the sight of the unnatural rift. The glow cast the world in blood-splattered light, and the cloaks and capes of his students were blown in the sudden strange circular movements of the air. He was in the best place to see the pale hand emerge, and that was reassuring in the strangeness, because at least some summoning was occurring. Louise de La Vallière had her oddities, yes, the sickness and her problems with controlling her magic, but at least this was a sign of some kind of success. And this morbid glow was a colour he had seen with her various magical mishaps before.

It was therefore with more equanimity than others might have managed that he watched as the second hand emerged, to be followed by a dark-haired head wearing some sort of mesh-tiara. Through tumbled a small girl-child, perhaps six or seven years of age, dressed in some sort of white gown which was certainly thin and unseasonable for this rain. Strange black strands which did not look like hair came from fleshy growths on her forehead and... no, the man realised, blinking, they were not flesh, they were some kind of thing stuck onto her, which was made more clear when she scrabbled at the skin and tore them off, casting them aside along with the tiara. Where the tiara had sat, there were patches of white skin, where there was no hair.

It was only at that point that he noticed that Louise had crumpled and fallen. Another one of her fainting spells, he realised; she would be fine once she had been taken to the infirmary. Well, this was a problem with the summoning; she certainly wasn't in a condition to bind her familiar. If it was right for her to do so at all; small girls were not meant to be familiars. And honestly... well, honestly wouldn't be much use anyway.

"Hello?" he said, stepping forwards. "Little girl... class, please be quiet... little girl, are you all right?"

Two reddish-orange eyes met his. She was terrified, he could tell that much. Softly, she was whispering something, a repetitive pattern of six or so words, but he could make neither head nor tail of them. The assonance of them, the pattern and beat of them was unfamiliar to him. This was fascinating! He was at least conversant with how all the known languages sounded - all save Elvish - and this sounded neither Tristainian, Gallian, Albionese, Germani, Otmani, Iberian, Romanian nor any of the dialects and variants he had encountered. Perhaps she was from even further afield!

She couldn't be warm, dressed in just a thin gown in the chill, rainy spring air. Carefully, he removed his outer cloak, making sure not to make any sudden movements. "It's all right," he said, gently, as if he would to a shy horse, holding the garment out in one hand. "Class, please, be quiet!" he added over his shoulder. "This will keep the rain away from you. Rain bad, yes?"

He looked down again at Louise. She was not having a nosebleed, which indicated that this was a mild one. He knew some of her classmates made jokes about her illness and about her unseen-in-public older sister, jokes about bad blood and inbreeding in the family, but he happened to know that this was not from her father's side. He should probably call the school nurse out, though, he decided - for one, the little girl was bleeding too from where she had torn away the strange things attached to her head - and gripping his staff, he muttered the short magic which would send a flame bird - he shaped his like sparrows - to bring the message to the healer.

The little girl's eyes went even wider, and she shrieked, pointing her finger at the little bolt of fire which shot out of the staff to fly back towards the castle.

"No, no, it's all right!" he hastily explained. Founder, what if she thought he had been threatening her? It was fire, after all. Perhaps her people did not do that, or perhaps she was simply too young to understand. Moving forwards, he draped the cloak over her, and reached down to take the little girl's hand and

_heavy fireproof leathers and tinted glass goggles, breath rasps under the hood.  
him and his men are stalking monsters, killers, freaks, like faceless scarecrows_  
_the hood doesn't stop the smell._

_you killed them.  
you killed them all._

_fire.  
fire everywhere. the village burned and the scent of roasting meat filled his nostrils._  
_pork._

_how?_  
_why did you find it easy?_

_flesh blackened in the heat, charring.  
so many times._  
_each time the screaming got louder, then went quiet._

_no!  
get away!  
don't burn me!_

_sobbing._  
_cooking meat._  
_heat tight against his skin, the skin drawn over his flesh as his sweat evaporated._

_i'll be good.  
don't do that to me too!_  
_please! please!_

sweating, shaking, skin flushed red and blood trickling in a crimson drizzle from his nostrils, Professor Colbert wrenched away. Unseen in the rain, tears ran from his eyes, blending seamlessly into the downpour. The little girl shrieked, shaking like a leaf as she madly tried to escape from his presence. Her white gown rode up as she scrambled in the mud shrugging off his cloak, streaking her with green and brown.

"Professor," asked one of the children, advancing on the little girl, "let me. I have younger..."

"No!" he yelled, voice crow-harsh. "No! No," he repeated, growing softer. "You... you'll scare her. Don't try to tou... to grab her. Just..." he paused for breath. "Leave her be."

Straightening his staff, he muttered the 'Detect Magic' cantrip, pointing it at the girl who was curled up rocking backwards and forwards by a tree away the half-circle of mages, away from the fainted form of Louise. What had just happened had been... he had no words. The girl. She was magical, certainly, which meant... he looked up at the sky. A vampire? Possible, given it was certainly overcast enough, and she looked pale. But the response of fear, the terror at... at what she had felt in him - yes, he knew in his heart that it had been that - a bloodsucking monster would not have responded like that, surely? Which suggested she was probably a mage, possibly from some foreign country from her strange tongue - which would imply that she also knew strange magics. Even an elf... he had not see her ears under that long, straggly hair.

He licked his lips and tasted copper, leaning heavily on his staff. Whatever was the case, this was a problem. Perhaps the nurse would do better at persuading her to trust her. Either way, he was certainly not going to touch her again.


	3. Chapter 3

**The Fearful Void - Part 3**

Louise came around to the sight of a grey clouds and the feeling of damp unpleasantness. She lay there for just a moment, trying to remember exactly why she was there, and then the pain struck again. Throbbing, pulsing, with every heartbeat it grew until the grey skies were painted crimson. And then, just like that, it was gone, replaced by a gut-clenching nausea.

"'w..." she managed, weakly, rolling onto her side. "'nk I'm g'na be s'k."

She was, emptying out her breakfast onto the grass. Louise lay there for a few moments, eyes clenched shut, before more memories kicked in, and she peaked out at the world.

"My familiar!" she groaned, pulling herself up to a sitting position too quickly. Her head still reeled, and the nausea surged again. She choked it down. Blinking, she stared around the field. Her peers were gone, and now there was a collection of figures who included the school nurse, her wand in hand, the headmaster's secretary, and towards the back of the group Professor Colbert. "Did I m-manage?" she asked, blinking. "What happened? I was feeling fine, honest," she lied, "and then I just collapsed. There was the circle and the..." she trailed off. "Professor?" she asked, warily. "What... what happened? How... how bad was it this t-time?"

The man cleared his voice. "Um," he began. It was not a promising start. "Well." He clenched his hands tighter around his staff. "How are you feeling?" he said.

"Fine, fine," Louise lied again. She wasn't fine. After one of her fainting spells, she usually hurt for most of the rest of the day, and right now she could taste the bile just waiting. "But my familiar?" Hesitantly, wobbling like a newborn fawn, she tried to pick herself up, and the nurse rushed to help her. Sometimes, she tried to resist it; as it was, she thankfully leaned against the heavily built woman. "Please, Professor?"

The man took a deep breath. "Behind you. Miss de la Valliére, how to put this... you appear to have summoned what appears to be a little girl. Between..." his voice shook, "... between the ages of six and seven at a guess. She... ah... she refuses to come near us."

Heart sinking, leaning heavily on the nurse, Louise turned, and beheld her grand summoning. Beneath a magical curtain against the rain, a small child sat in the mud, dressed in a thin white gown smeared with mud. She was curled up into a ball, arms hugging her knees close to her body, and her long straggly dark hair fell down in front of her eyes like a veil.

"Professor Colbert recommends that you approach her," the headmaster's secretary said, curiosity in her voice, "as you did summon her after all. However, spells indicate that she is magical, so we do not believe..."

"... no," Louise said hollowly, "if she's a mage, of course I wouldn't bind her."

"Quite," the green-haired secretary said. "I'm glad you understand; this could be politically..." she paused for a moment, "... problematic if you bound someone's daughter, and... well." She spread her hands. "Well, you understand."

Louise swallowed, and nodded. She understood that she was a failure at magic. She understand that once again, she had mucked up, Once again, she'd been unable to do what other people could do properly. Yet another failure. She had even managed to - effectively - kidnap a young girl, rather than get the familiar she'd wanted. Stupid Zero. Stupid useless Zero with zero successes mucking up again.

The wind around her picked up, and Professor Colbert at the back of the group took another step back.

Well, even the stupid useless Zero was still going to be a noble, and do her duty. Because duty and honour were all she had left now. She was a failure at magic, a disappointment to her family, and her peers, who laughed at her behind her back and whispered when she wasn't looking at the weird girl who fainted and who got headaches and who was _strange _were right about her.

She was next to the little girl, inside the bubble of rainlessness.

"I'm sorry," she whispered down to her, squatting down beside her. "I really am. I didn't mean to... to take you from your family or whatever."

Two eyes, yellow-red stared back at her from between a veil of hair. The child softly replied, although Louise could not understand a word.

"Do you want some food?" she asked. "Food? Eating? Hungry? Om nom nom?" She mimed eating.

Quick as a flash, the girl lashed out, to latch one scrawny hand around her wrist. Something pulsed behind her temples, and the whispering of her classmates grew louder - wait, they weren't here, were they - but after a moment, the child let go, clambering to her feet, staring impassively at the squatting Louise.

"Come on, then," Louise said, trying to sound reassuring despite the wobble in her voice and in her legs as she stood. "This way, I suppose." She glanced over at the Academy staff. "I think she's hungry," she called out.

* * *

...

* * *

And now the two of them were sitting in the anteroom before the headmaster's office, a tray of leftovers from breakfast fruit before them and - thank the Founder - a pot of the headmaster's tea, made with rare leaves from Cathay, from beyond Rub al Khali. Louise had only been permitted it a few times, and it was wonderful; the little girl didn't seem to like the bitter drink but was already on her third glass of orange juice.

Louise could just about hear the distant voices from within the office. They would probably be discussing her future as well. After all, she'd summoned a probably-noble girl, albeit one who didn't speak any known languages. That sort of thing wasn't normal, and no one failed the summoning ritual, not like this. Normal failures just mucked up the words and tried again. Once again, she'd found a way to fail that most people couldn't even think of.

Just wonderful.

"Do you want some more bread?" she asked the pale-skinned young girl beside her. "Bread." She paused, and mentally slapped herself. A fine job of things she was doing. She _knew _how to learn languages; she had had tutors. "This," she said, moving so the little girl could see her, "is bread." She pointed at the slices. "Bread."

There was a meaningless response.

"Bread?" Louise tried again. "Bread."

"Braad?"

Louise smiled at her, and nodded. That seemed to be a universal-enough gesture. "Yes, well done," she said, clapping. "Now, next to it, is apples. That one," she pointed, "is a red apple. This one is a green apple." She picked the two up. "Red apple. Green apple. Red apple. Green apple."

"Raad appal," the little girl said, flatly, pointing at the red one. "Grain appal." Her mouth twitched, and she stared over at one of the shelves filled with leather-bound books sitting behind the secretary's desk. "Raad?" she asked, pointing at the spines.

Louise nodded. She was actually mildly impressed. Well, if they were going to kick her out of the school because she was a useless failure, she thought, the black depression sweeping back in, at least she might have some success as a teacher. Now. Perhaps something a bit more difficult. "Louise," Louise tried, pointing at herself. "My name is Louise. Lou-ise. Louise."

"Loo. Ays?" the dark-haired girl echoed, tilting her head to the side.

It was probably close enough, Louise accepted. "Yes," she said, nodding her head and smiling. "Louise," she said again, pointing at herself. "And you are?" she asked, twisting her hand so she was pointing at the girl, who flinched away. "No no no," she sighed, raising her hands in frustration at everything. "Louise," she said, pointing at herself. "Your name is?"

Red-orange eyes crinkled up as the little girl frowned. "Loo-ays?" she said, pointing at herself.

Louise shook her head. "No," she said, shaking her head. "Louise," she said again, a hint of weariness creeping into her voice. "I am Louise. That is my name. Louise." She pointed down at the table, "Bread. Red apple. Green apple." She pointed at the girl. "What is your name?"

The little girl stared blankly, winding a strand of hair around one finger. "Al-ma," she said, pointing at herself, after some thought.

Well... it _could _be a name, the pink-haired girl considered. "Alma?" she asked, pointing at the girl.

"Alma," possibly-Alma repeated.

"Alma?" Louise asked, pointing at herself.

The girl shook her head, a slow motion. "Loo-ays?" she said, pointing at Louise. "Alma," she added, pointing at herself.

Louise smiled widely in sheer relief, before slumping down. "Well, that's something," she said mostly to herself, reaching out to take the sma... Alma in a one-armed hug. The girl slipped away, the hints of a smile on her pale face vanishing, shoulder half-raised protectively.

"Excuse me," the headmaster's secretary said, leaning out of the doorway, "but Headmaster Osmond will see you now. You and the little girl."

Louise puffed herself up, and slightly regretted it at the dizziness it caused. "Her name is Alma," she told the green-haired woman proudly. "Not 'the little girl'."


	4. Chapter 4

**The Fearful Void - Part 4**

"Well, my dear, you have put us in quite a mess. A pickle, if you will. Not just one pickle, in fact. An entire jar of pickles. And perhaps some nice rolls, and a cold side of luncheon meat, and a measure of wine."

Louise stared at the headmaster in confusion. "Sir," she said, for lack of anything else to say. The headmaster's secretary leaned over, and whispered something in his ear.

"Oh, sorry, I've missed lunch because of this," the old man said, a grumpy note in his voice. "I got distracted." He coughed. "Mmm. Yes. Now, yes. We have... through dark and arcane arts, confirmed that the girl you summoned is neither vampire nor transformed dragon nor even an elf..."

"... she doesn't have pointy ears," Miss Chevreuse, one of the earth mage teachers said gnomishly.

The headmaster shot her a disgusted look, and continued, "... and that, through our exhaustive and definitive lists confirm that she is, all things considered, in the balance of probabilities, most likely, maybe, possibly a mage."

"I understand," Louise said. She could not deny that there was something a little hollow in her voice, and she glanced down at Alma, who... was hiding behind her back, face pressed against her mantle. "I think she's shy," the girl said.

Professor Colbert pursed his lips.

"Indeed," Headmaster Osmond said, "And for that reason, clearly, it would be a bad idea to bind her as a familiar. As a foreign noble, it is our duty to treat her well, until we can make contact with her people."

"Yes," Louise said.

"In time," Headmaster Osmond said, "well, I've already talked to the staff, and they will assign a maid to you, to help with the care and look after the child when you are in lessons. But that will take some time, and Professor Colbert has kindly offered to vet the help so that, don't you know, they're suitable to look after a possibly-noble little girl and so on and so forth, so for today, you should look after her. Keep her entertained and whatnot. Shouldn't be too hard, right? I do believe you're a youngest sister, so just act like one of your big sisters did to you, right? Show her the wonders of the school, you know, the library, the gardens, that sort of thing."

"How am I meant to look after a little girl?" was the question Louise wanted to ask. She was sixteen, and... well, most children who went near her hadn't liked her, when she had been seven herself. And the advice was less than useful.

Well, that wasn't quite true, she had to admit to herself. Alma seemed to love the gardens. Even in the rain-sodden landscape, she was apparently happy to lie on the grass, and just... do things. That was the only way Louise could describe it. Within not too long, the little girl had acquired even more mud-stains.

When she discovered the swing that someone had hung in one of the kitchen gardens, it took Louise almost an hour to move her on from there.

Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad. At least she was easy to entertain, it seemed.

* * *

...

* * *

They ate away from the other students in the main hall; the teachers felt it was best to not expose the new arrival to a mess of inquisitive and hungry teenagers all at once. Both Louise and Alma were ravenous, and after gorging on partridge, the older girl decided that it was probably best to head in a bedwards direction. She was tired herself, and she was fairly sure that small children needed more sleep.

Her room really was not set up to have another staying there, Louise realised very quickly. She had been preparing for a familiar, and so there was fresh straw and fresh hay - the latter in case the beast had been a herbivore. None of that was right for a little girl.

"I think you'll have to sleep in my bed," she told the little girl. She smiled, feeling weary and hoping that it did not show. "I hope you don't snore."

The blank face stared back at her, and Louise pursed her lips, looking around the room. It was bare compared to the rooms of her peers, and she had been very careful to move everything she could move away from her bed, to make a safe zone for when her nightmares spilled over into the real world and magic shook the furniture. There were no wall-hangings, no free-standing things, and last year she had the school get an earth mage to make dimples in the stone floor which served to stop the bed sliding.

"I honestly don't know what to say to you about this, Alma," she said, with a shrug. "You don't understand me, and I don't think I can pantomime the gestures to you or anything. Strange things might happen in the night, and... um, I'll try to stop them as best I can, but..." she spread her hands wide.

The little girl looked around. In her soft, yet slightly guttural voice, she said something back, making gestures with her hands. She clutched her head, and made whooshing noises.

"I don't understand," was all Louise could manage in response. Her eyes widened. "Oh," she said, quickly. "Um. Do you need the chamberpot? The chamberpot?" Looking around, she recovered it from its place - it wasn't safe for her to keep it under the bed. "Do you need this?"

The little girl stared back at her, and reaching out, took her hand. Louise's eyebrow twitched, and a headache grew, right behind her left eyeball - with her free hand, she pushed the back of her hand against her screwed-shut eye, teeth clenched. The pain stopped, as the girl let go, clutching her own head, her motions of pain and discomfort exactly the same Louise was showing. She whispered something in her strange language, a look of confusion in those yellow-red eyes.

"What... was that?" Louise managed. "That... the headache."

A mutter of explanation, in which the phrase "loo-ays" appeared three times.

"I'm going to have to think about this," Louise said to herself, slumping down on her bed. Pausing, she sat back up, and went over to a chest in the far corner. Flicking open the catches, she frowned. She had meant to get more ice today, hadn't she, because she'd been busy yesterday and... oh well. She recovered two of the waterskins from the ice-melt, and bought them over.

"I don't know if you get headaches like I do normally," she explained, "but the cold makes them feel better." She rested the cold against her forehead, and sighed. "Like that, see?"

The girl took the other one, and copied the gesture, with a faint squeak at the chill. Suspiciously, she glared at the water-sack, before putting it against her eye.

"Look," Louise said, after a while, sizing up the mud and grass-smeared gown-smock Alma was wearing, "... you can wear one of my spare nightgowns tonight. We can see about getting you some proper clothes tomorrow, because that thing is dirty." Thankfully, she began to shed her uniform. Wouldn't this be embarrassing if this had been a boy she had summoned? Although those red-yellow eyes - noble eyes, commoners didn't look like that - were rather disconcerting, and the pink-haired girl didn't feel up to the pantomime of explaining 'can you please not look at me when I get changed' to a little girl possibly too young to know what she should be doing. Certainly, Alma shed her clothes easily enough when Louise managed, through demonstration and presentation of a second nightgown, to convey that she should get changed too.

She was not wearing anything under that incredibly thin gown, and so it was that Louise could see the markings. Fingernail scratches along her arms and wrists, close to the skin and scabbed over. Bruising on her shoulders; clear prints from large, adult hands grabbing her. The same on her ankles. Little... bites, they had to be... on veins. And she was on the thin side of things - not quite malnourished, but not exactly healthy either - with not enough of the baby fat which Louise had possessed at the same age.

It drew a sharp intake breath from Louise, as she stared too. Unconsciously, her fingers drifted to her own wrists, hugging the skin underneath. Those were self-inflicted marks, she knew for a fact. For lack of anything else to do, the pink-haired girl massaged her own temples with two fingers while she thought.

She blinked, and stood again, rummaging through her chest of draws for the medicinal box she was permitted to have. Louise opened the top section with the whispered pass-code, and recovered a jar of greenish-yellow cutsbalm. "It's medicine," she explained, voice soft and low, "alchemy, with infused water magic. Please, I can help." She swallowed. "I... I don't know what's happened to you before," she said, "but... those look painful. Alma. Please." She advanced, unscrewing the cap. "I know how much scratches like that can hurt, and bruises and..." she swallowed hard, as the little girl hunched up again. She'd seen the girl do it before, and now she had context.

This small girl was scared of being hit or grabbed. From the bruises on her shoulders, it looked like whoever did it was... and another piece clicked into place in Louise's head. When Cattleya went into convulsions, when people had to hold her down... the bruises on the shoulders and legs which that left looked like that. Someone had held her down, forcefully.

The pink-haired girl slumped down heavily. "I'm going to have to write home to Mother," she said, simply. "I... I can't deal with this. I... I was just meant to get a familiar today. Some animal I could have follow me. Not... not this. Not a little girl. Not one who... who gives me headaches and who gets headaches from me. Not one who doesn't speak any Tristainian."

Alma stared blankly back at her, still cringing, whispering something inaudible.

"I... I don't know if you're just sick from something, or if someone has beaten you and things," Louise continued, "but... ah." Carefully, she put the cutsbalm down on the floor before the girl, and took a step back. "You rub in onto things that hurt," she explained, miming scooping some up and putting it on her own shoulder. "It makes things not hurt. Feel better."

A bit more prompting and encouragement was enough to get Alma to at least try the cutsbalm, and the little girl squeaked at the chill feeling of the balm sinking into the bruises on her shoulders.

"Wrists too," Louise prompted, gesturing. "It stops scars, and also infections. Even if you put it on scabs, it makes things heal properly. It's _wonderful_, because it also makes things not hurt."

A musketfire barrage of words in Alma's language, and a hesitant, wobbly smile from the girl. "Grain," the girl tried after a moment's thought, pointing at her still-bare shoulder. "Grain-raad," she said, with a shake of her head. Indeed, the bruise colour was fading already, the inflammation already gone.

"Yes," Louise managed, her voice choking slightly. After a moment's pause, she coughed. "And we can now try to put your nightgown on properly. Well, my nightgown. Nightgown," she said, pointing at the clothing. "Put on the nightgown."

"Puton nitegaan?"

"Yes, yes!" Louise mimed. "And then we can go to sleep." She closed her eyes. "Sleep," she said, breathing, resting her head on her hands. "Sleep?"

The nightgown was as she had guessed, far far too large for the little girl, but at least the now-fading bruises and cuts were no longer visible. The pink-haired girl suppressed a slight giggle at the serious-faced little girl with the neck of the garment reaching down to her breastbone and arms that were not so much arms as legs, and climbed up onto her bed.

"At least we're both small, so there's space in the bed for both of us," Louise explained, shaking her head at her own silliness. "I may well go crazy with only you to talk to like this, so I might as well get you able to talk back," she informed Alma. "Bed. This is a bed. This bed is where you sleep. Sleep in the bed."

"Sleep baad?"

Louise shuffled under the sheets as the small child clambered up in her too-large nightgown. "I hope not," she said, mind distracted. "I hope I sleep well tonight."


	5. Chapter 5

**The Fearful Void - Part 5**

The sun was a bright white, beating down on the long grass. Despite the brightness, though, mists whirled and twirled around Louise as she waded through the summer's growth, whipping against her knees. She was quite aware that she was asleep and dreaming.

This was not an unusual thing. When other people talked idly about how dreams were things that flashed in front of their eyes, half-baked memories fast forgotten upon waking, this daughter of the de la Vallierés was fast-bound by them. Within her sleep lay worlds within scenes of memory, and oft-times - when the headaches grew intolerable and red bled into her world - they would intrude upon waking as well, like fever-dreams.

At least these grassy fields, leading up a gentle incline to a tree-tipped hilltop, were pleasant. There were much worse things in her dreams sometimes.

At the top of the hill, there was a single tree, bare of all leaves. And hanging from the tree was a rope swing. Sitting on the swing, legs dangling, was a little girl in a red dress. Her feet were stained red, and she clung onto the ropes with whitened knuckles.

"Alma?" Louise managed, frowning.

"_Louise_," the little girl said, unblinking.

The pink-haired girl shrugged. "Well, I suppose today has been... unusual. I suppose it's natural I'd dream of..." she trailed off. "This is really you, isn't it?" she said. She could feel it, in the way her breath caught and in the whispers in the back of her head.

"_This is me,_" Alma said, in her soft voice.

Louise tilted her head. "Not exactly," she said, sounding out the feeling in her head. "It's not exactly you."

The little girl said nothing.

The older girl made her way to the top of the hill, coming closer to the swing. "Look," she said, sticking her hands in the pockets of her nightgown, "I'm sorry," she apologised. "I... just wanted a familiar. Something to show I wasn't a failure as a mage. Something I could use to show I'm not a failure. Just... just one bit of magic that worked properly. And instead I accidentally summoned you from wherever you're from." She was next to the swing by now, and crouched down, so her red eyes were on a level with the girl's red-yellow ones. "So, I'm sorry. We're... we'll try to find a way to get you home." She paused. Was that right? Would the little girl want that? With those bruises and those cuts? The next words only confirmed things.

"_I'm not._" The little girl swallowed, a quick, compulsive motion. "_Don't make me go back. I don't want to._"

Louise glanced down at those red-stained feet, which now she was closer, she could see were dripping crimson droplets down to soak into the earth. "But..." she began, unsure of what else to say.

"_Don't make me go back. I don't want to be in that place again. It hurts. They do things to me._" She shivered, and all around her, the world bent and warped, the grassy fields melting away to leave an all-encompassing grey wall and barren earth. The tree itself remained, but there were other things down here; a metal wire frame on wheels, a black loop the size of a man's torso. "_You let me go outside,_" she said in a hollow voice. "_There's grass in your place. There's no grass here._"

Louise looked around wildly. "What... what did you do?"

"_I try to pretend that it's like the place we went for that picnic,_" Alma said, ignoring Louise. "_Back before Mummy... died._" She turned her gaze on Louise. "_I want her back,_" she said, softly. "_Give her back._"

"I can't," Louise said, gently. "I'm..." she slumped down, further, "... I'm just a failure," she whispered. "I can't even do a basic spell properly, can't even get a proper familiar, and even the most powerful mages can't bring people back from the dead. Not properly."

"_You're nice to me_," Alma said, tilting her head slightly. "_Even though you hate yourself." _She reached down, and put her hand on Louise's head. "_Please don't hate yourself. It feels bad. I'll be your familiar if you don't make me go back to that place. Please. I don't want to go back._"

Louise puffed herself up, outrage swelling in her chest. "Do you think I'd do that?" she managed through the anger, red flickers forming around her. "Even if I really, really want a familiar... I'm a noble! We... we can't be bought like that! I wouldn't send you back to..." she gestured around, at the blank stone and bare earth, "... a place like this even if you refused to be my familiar! That... that would be an outrage and affront to my honour! And even if I can't do magic properly, I... I still have it..." she said, deflating. "Even if it's all I have. I won't give it up."

Alma stared back at her, eyes wide. "_Thank you_," she said, eventually.

"Don't mention it," Louise snapped, and paused. "Wait, no. Don't mention it," she said again, more gently.

A small pale hand took hers. "_You're the nicest person I've ever known,_" Alma whispered. "_Apart from Mama._"

"That's not a good thing," the older girl said, heart sinking. "I'm not a nice person."

"_You are,_" Alma said, peaking from under her fringe. "_You get angry at yourself, and hate yourself, not other people. You haven't hated or been scared of me yet at all. And you let me go outside, and don't poke me with needles or make me watch screens or put me in the machines or make me try to move things or put animals near me when I'm angry or anything. You don't hurt me at all._"

Louise worked her mouth. "I can't be the only person who hasn't done... any of that stuff," she protested. "I... what about your father, for example."

The little girl flinched at that word, shoulder hunching up in instinctive defence. "_He's the worst_," she whispered, voice hollow. Above her, the skies began to glow, light from above bleeding to red and casting the entire area in a crimson glow as thick storm clouds gathered. She cried out inarticulately, shivering in terror, and clinging tighter onto Louise's hand.

"Alma? Alma! What's going on?" Louise asked, looking around wildly. The ground under her bare feet was damp, blood welling up from the soil and filling her nose with its metallic scent. It was warm between her toes.

"_He's here, he's here, he's here,_" the girl whispered to herself over and over again, trying to hide herself behind Louise despite the unseen nature of the threat.

The older girl drew her wand, and gritted her teeth, trying as hard as she could to wake up. It seldom worked, but it was just successful enough that she always tried.

"_We can't hide from him_," Alma said, staring up at Louise with desperate eyes. "_He always finds me. I can't get away. He's going to take me back and..."_ she began to sob, as the walls began to bleed.

Louise glanced around madly, looking for any means of escape, or even an enemy she could target. There was nothing, and as she looked, the sun began to flicker, the red light it was casting down flickering like a guttering candle. What could she do? What could she do?

There was one thing she could do.

She screwed her eyes shut, and cast her thoughts back. Outside her, she heard Alma gasp through the sobs, but she continued to concentrate, immersing herself in the past.

There was the sound of a bed thumping against a wall, and the whispering grew louder. Alma clinging to her, Louise opened her eyes to stare down at her older sister - so like herself and her mother in appearance - convulsing on the bed, the gag between her teeth stopping her from biting off her tongue.

The window smashed, and a spike of pain painted itself across her cheek, the memory of a cut.

The whispering grew louder.

The fresh plaster on the walls crumbled in sudden entropic fury, collapsing off old and stinking.

The whispering grew louder.

Eyes welling with tears Louise screwed them shut, trying to close off the sight, but she could see the dark red glow through her eyelids, and hear her sister shriek through the gag.

"Cattleya, it's going to be... Louise, how did you get in here?" a voice - loud, adult - boomed from above her. "Get out of here! Get out!"

And now the two of them were in the Secret Garden in the de la Vallieré estates, and Louise was on her knees sobbing, deep heaving bursts of tears that wracked her body.

"_It hurts..._" Alma whispered, wrapping her arms around Louise's head. "_Don't think about that._"

"... I... I..." Louise sucked down air. "... if I think ab... about it when I'm dreaming, I... I always end... end up there. It... it can break... break worse dreams. But it... C-C-Cattleya..." she burst into fresh waves of tears, clinging to the little girl. "I was f-f-five, and..."

Morning could not come too soon.


	6. Chapter 6

**The Fearful Void - Part 6**

Humming to herself, a black-haired girl in an Academy maid's uniform made her way through the corridors of the second year girls' rooms, her arms laden down with folded clothes. The early morning light streamed in through the large glass windows at the end of each corridor, and the magelights in the halls were slowly fading as the light levels increased. Her humming was interrupted by her counting her way along the door numbers, and once took quite a pause as she stepped aside to allow an obviously dishevelled boy who emerged from one of the rooms past her. Quietly, she noted which door the boy had come from, and smiled to herself as facts conformed with the tales of the staff and the reputations of certain students. Then she was on her way again, humming quietly, until she found the room she was looking for.

She knocked on the door. There was no answer. She knocked again, louder. And again.

The door creaked open, the light around her dimming as if a cloud had passed over the sun. The magelights in the hall flickered, making a buzzing noise like a fly trapped within a glass. Red eyes glared at her through the crack in the door. Siesta could just about pick out, in the darkness, a short pale-skinned figure with heavy bags under her eyes, glaring at her from under a veil of dishevelled hair.

"It's too early in the morning for it to be this early in the morning," Louise said, voice low. "Tell me what you want and why you're making this much noise."

The maid shivered, her arms moving in front of her body protectively. The de la Vallieré girl was strange, there was no doubt about it. Oh, the students might talk about how she was a loner, but the serving staff knew rather more about the strangely burned clothes which sometimes made their way down in her laundry, the way she would go down to the ice cellars to gather some and take it back to her room regularly, and the abnormal condition of her room when it was cleaned. "My lady," she said, out loud. "My name is Siesta. The Academy has assigned me as your maidservant, for as long as the little girl remains in your care. I am to aid in looking after her, especially when you must attend classes, and allow you to keep up with your work."

Louise stared at her, looking her up and down. "I see," she said, after a long pause.

"If you need any help with her, please ask. I have six younger brothers and sisters, so I am plenty experienced with children." She paused. "Is the young lady still asleep."

"We were both awake," Louise said.

An awkward pause.

"Do you require anything, my lady?" Siesta asked, to fill the space. "Another bed to be moved up for the young lady, or anything else of that nature?"

The noble girl blinked, and tried to think straight. "She slept in my bed last room," she said, "but it would probably be best to have a second bed moved up, yes." She severely doubted that Alma would choose to sleep there, as she had woken up with a warm little body hugging her tightly. It would probably be better to have a second bed in the room, however. And, "Ah," Louise said. "I'll need more clothing for her, and right now I need warm water and towels. She... um, managed to get fairly muddy yesterday, and she only has the clothes she arrived in."

Siesta became aware of a second face staring at her through the gap in the door, a similarly pale girl with dark hair and red-yellow eyes which stared up at her impassively. Her lips twitched as she registered properly what the small child was wearing; a nightdress far too large for her, which - in the white garment - made her almost look bridal. "Yes, my lady," she said to Louise. "If you would but open the door, I could come in. I was advised to bring a selection of clothes and I must confess that they may not be up to the young lady's standards, but they were all that could be found to fit a child of that age on such short notice."

The little girl looked up at her, tilting her head slightly. In a soft, whispering voice she said something in a language Siesta could make neither heads nor tails of.

"I'm very pleased to meet you, my lady," Siesta said in response, knees bending in a half-curtsey which was the best she could manage with her arms full. "How should I address you?"

"Her name is Alma," Louise answered for her. "Your name was Siesta, wasn't it?"

"Yes, my lady."

"Alma," the noble said, letting the door open more which allowed the dark-haired older girl to see into the room. It looked to be in quite a state of disarray. "This is Siesta," she said, pointing at the servant. "Siesta. She is a maid, and will be helping me look after you."

"See-easter?"

"Yes, Siesta," Louise said, with a nod.

"See-easter," Alma said, pointing at the maid. "Loo-ays. Alma. Yes?"

Louise nodded solidly, and gave a little clap. "Yes, well done," she said, broken by a yawn. She caught the way that Siesta was looking at her, and blushed. "She doesn't speak Tristainian," she explained defensively, "and so I'm trying my best to get her knowing things. And... and I talk to her as if she understands, because I think that will make it easier for her to learn words." Her brow settled. "That will also be one of your duties," she told the maid a little more imperiously. "Teaching her words... you said you have siblings, so you surely have done this sort of thing before?"

"Yes, my lady," Siesta said honestly. "If you do not mind, I will leave these clothes for the young lady here, and then go and fetch the hot water and towels you requested."

"Yes. Do that," Louise said, taking the clothes from the maid, and then closing the door on her. Looking around, she took in the scattered books, the smashed chair, the overturned table - lifted clean out of its niche in the floor - and the singed rugs.

"That was a bad night," she said, mostly to herself. "We probably need to clean up. And quickly. I will _not_be judged by the common help." She dumped the pile of clothes on the bed, and resumed picking up books, which she had been doing until the maid knocked. "It seems we can only talk when you're in my dreams... or I'm in your dreams, I guess..." she said to the little girl dressed in the too-large nightgown. "How annoying." She pointed at the clothes. "Alma, can you try looking at the clothes there? Try them on? They're for you. Put on clothes?" She tried miming the gestures.

"Loo-ays?"

The older girl picked up what turned out to be a chemise, holding it against herself. It was clearly too small for her, and she hoped that demonstration would be enough for the little girl, aided by passing it to her. "Put on," she mimed, trying to put it over her head.

Alma's eyes widened at the pile, and she said something, accompanied with a jab of her finger at herself.

"It's all for you... too small for me," Louise tried, holding her hands closely together as if measuring a short distance, before she went back to trying to pick up books, dusting off the leather covers and wincing at the bent pages. "Alma's," she tried, pointing at the clothes. "For Alma."

Alma bit down on her lips. A quick patter of guttural words did not help clarify matters, but the rise of the corner of her mouth seemed to suggest she was pleased. She shed the over-large nightgown - which was not exactly a hard exercise for her, given how the neckline had been around her bellybutton - and started rummaging through the clothes.

By the time Siesta returned with a bronze handbasin filled with warm water and towels thrown over both shoulders, Louise had managed to set right most of the damage - apart from the fresh scoring on the ceiling over her bed, as if something had clawed at the bare stone - and Alma was with great confusion staring at the clothes now scattered over the bed. At the first sight of Siesta, she began to gesture at the black-haired maid, sketching out inverted triangles in the air.

"Alma, what is it?" Louise asked, as she closed the door behind the maid.

"Maybe she's used to different fashions where she's from?" Siesta said, perplexed. "I'm sorry, my lady, if these are not what you would prefer, but it was at very short notice."

"I'll try asking her tomorrow night," Louise said softly, to herself. "Please help wash her feet and get her dressed," she told Siesta. "She may need help with the clothes, if she's not used to whatever you provided."

"My lady?" the maid asked, frowning.

"Was I not clear?" Louise asked, the attempt at quiet menace ruined by another yawn. She really hoped the maid hadn't heard the side-comment. "I need to get dressed and woken up myself."

"Yes, my lady," Siesta said. "Come on, Alma, please don't make a mess of the clothes on the bed." She reached down, and took the girl's hand and

_*pupils widen*_

squeezed it. "Come on," she said, thoughtfully. "Let's get those grubby little feet cleaned, and we can try on some clothes, yes? Is is the chemise which is confusing you? Do you wear things under your clothes where you come from?"

Blank-faced, Alma let herself be guided over to the brass wash-basin. Her eyes flicked from Louise to Siesta and back again, even as the maid got her to stand in the warm water and began to scrub her legs of the accumulated dirt.

"She would have prettier hair if it was better taken care of," Siesta remarked as Louise herself got changed. "Do you want me to wash it?"

Louise paused for a moment, before shaking her head as she smoothed down her own chemise. "I was planning to take her to the baths this evening," she said, "and washing her hair now would delay breakfast." She stared at Alma. "I certainly remember I used to be vile-tempered in the morning when I hadn't eaten," she said, tucking back a lock of pink hair. "Yes, it's probably a good idea to get food in her quickly," she said, just catching the hint of a smirk on the maid's lips. "Is something funny?" she snapped at the dark-haired girl who was now towelling off Alma's legs.

"Oh, no, no," Siesta said with a placid face, "my lady, I was merely amused by your observation." She hastily added, "I used to get tetchy in the mornings, too. It is clearly a trait shared by commoners and nobles alike."

Louise stared at her suspiciously.

Siesta lowered her head, and busied herself with her work.

"I am not bad-tempered in the morning!" Louise snapped.

"Yes, my lady," the maid said, refusing to look the noble in the eye.

"Loo-ays. See-easter," Alma said with a giggle, squirming slightly as the maid towelled between her toes.

Louise sighed, and with a put-upon expression, began to brush her hair. "You better be ticklish and not laughing at me, Alma," she informed the child over her shoulder.


	7. Chapter 7

**The Fearful Void - Part 7**

_Dear Mother_, Louise wrote, jotting down notes in runic shorthand in charcoal on the paper. With her other hand, she skewered a slice of apple on a fork, and bought it to her mouth. What was she going to say, what was she going to say?

_Pleasantries_, she noted. _Talk about weather, mention how it has been a miserable spring, how all the rain has probably been good for the crops. Ask after E, C, father. Ask how the ball she was organising just after term started went._

Louise paused, and crossed out the last bit. That was clearly just her delaying, and Mother would know that. Another bit of apple was skewered and devoured.

_In some difficulty_. Yes, that worked. "Difficulty" was a nice and mild word. Accurate, yes, but it would not look like she was running off to her mother at the first sign of problems, or exaggerating things to get more attention. Her mother was strict and did not approve of weakness in her children. The sole exception she made was for the... issues that she, and especially Cattleya had, and it was there that they got a glimpse of a more sympathetic side.

Louise glanced to her right, at her "difficulty", and smiled. Alma was sitting on three cushions on the high backed chair, staring with wide eyes at the perfectly normal breakfast before her. She was apparently having problems deciding what to eat of the selection that Louise had put in front of her, overwhelmed by the choices. As if she was detecting the older girl's gaze upon her, Alma turned to stare at her, and tugged Louise's sleeve. She said something in her language, and pointed at each of the things in turn.

"Oh, right," Louise said. "That is honey. Honey."

"Ho-nigh."

"Cinnamon porridge." Louise paused. Adjectives were probably still too complicated. "Porridge," she said. "Porridge."

"Pooredge."

"Scrambled eggs. Scrambled eggs, with," Louise added, poking the little black things in the egg, "truffles. Truffles."

"Skraambleggs. Treffuls."

The naming thing was almost becoming a game, a routine way of trying to get them to a level where they could talk. All the way to breakfast, Alma had been demanding the names of thing seen along the way. She seemed to have an exceptional memory for such things, and secretly Louise was rather glad of it, because the faster they could even have basic conversations, the less miming for things like "Are you hungry?" and "Do you need the toilet?" would be needed. The gestures for the latter were just embarrassing.

They worked their way through the various nouns in turn, and then Alma went back along the objects, naming them each in heavily accented Tristainian. Her lips twitched, and she patted Louise on the sleeve, before diving into the food as if she had not had a normal breakfast in a long time.

Louise could not help but smile. For all the girl was probably a mage of some kind, the state she had been in and the nightmares and sheer terror she had of her father - well, if they had not been sharing dreams, Louise would have been having nightmares in her own right. She knew just enough, she felt, for her imagination to fill in the gaps. Her oldest sister was a natural philosopher-mage at the University of Amstreldamme, and Louise had heard of some of the experimental things they did, like testing how the earth within various substances could be reshaped and changed, and what various fire mages could manage to do. She had been disgusted by Eleanore's casual mention of 'the effects of what water magic could do to living flesh - we used pigs', and had not eaten much at the dinner where that had been bought up. It had probably been for the best that Cattleya was having one of her episodes at the time, or she would have got angry to hear about animals being treated like that, and no one wanted that.

Now her mind was filling in what would happen if a bunch of natural philosopher-mages wanted to find out how magic worked. Testing potions and the like on people to see if it affected how they were able to cast. Putting them in very cold places to see if the elemental shift would inhibit fire magic. What they could do if... if they were trying to find out why Cattleya was so sick and why she had those fever-dreams and fits.

They were not pleasant thoughts. They made her angry. They made her scared.

A glass shattered somewhere behind her, and Louise bit down on her lip. Closing her eyes, she tried not to think of anything, and carried out her breathing exercise, trying not to think of anything. It might just have been someone dropping something, but if she was getting emotional, she would rather clamp down on it early. It might mean she could avoid ruining her day with a headache.

"Loo-ays," Alma said softly, tugging on her sleeve. "Pooredge. Ho-nigh. Meelk."

Louise turned to see the elaborately decorated and almost over-filled bowl in front of the girl. And... uh, its empty companion. "My, you are hungry," she said, slowly.

"Hun-gree," Alma agreed, spoon in hand, a moustache of milk on her upper lip.

The older girl shook her head with a fond smile, and went back to her draft for the letter. _Summoned a little girl, _she noted. _Name of Alma, ~7, Prof. C says she's a mage. Have not bound her as a familiar after talking with Headmaster. Foreign, does not speak Tristainian, am looking after her while people think what to do._

Yes, that was good. She was clearly citing higher authority. No one could blame her when she was working from the Headmaster's advice.

Now came the harder bit.

_Have seen magic from her,_ she wrote. _She was in my dreams, could talk in there. Also she got headache like me and you and C get. She has nightmares of father, signs of mistreatment, underfed for a noble, bruises on shoulders and wrists - put your cutsbalm on them._

It sounded ridiculous, Louise knew. People didn't summon mages. All she could do was factually report everything which might be of use to her mother.

_Academy is not going to try to kick me out for summoning - after all succeeded at summoning but they told me not to bind, has assigned maid to help me look after her so marks don't suffer_, she added after a moment's thought. That would stop her mother being concerned about that.

_Am thinking of seeing if she can cast magic; if mage, maybe we could_

Louise paused, and scored out that line again and again. No, that would be presumptuous. Highly so.

_Intend to see if she could use magic_, she tried instead. _Confirm if mage. Mother, I would appreciate your presence here. This is beyond my expertise, and I do not wish to embarrass the family or Tristain with a poor choice involving the treatment of a foreign mage who I accidentally summoned._

_Your loving daughter etc etc_

With a sigh, Louise raised the charcoal from the paper, tapping it against the surface until she realised she was making a mess of the sheet. Yes, if she wrote it up and sent this today by courier, it would... yes, if her mother left as soon as she got it... leave an extra day... she still wouldn't arrive before next Voidsday, if not later, but at least it was something to take into consideration and...

"Hey, what're you scribbling about, Zero?" called out a loud, braying voice from behind her. "And what's the girl you've got with you doing eating directly from the honey?"

"Nothing to do with you, de Bruxelles," Louise snapped back at the purple-haired girl behind her, red eyes locking with lilac. She was not going to look, she was not going to look, even though now that she listened the sounds coming from Alma sounded remarkably like the noise that someone who has just stuck a spoon in a jar of honey and is now sucking it all off sounded like. Not that she knew what that sounded like. Of course.

The other girl sniffed. "I rather think it does matter when your 'guest'," the sarcasm around the word was heavy, "is taking all the honey for the table."

Louise's lips twitched. Oh, she did not need this sort of thing right now, but she really should not go and provoke the other girl. She really, really should not provoke her. She didn't need an argument now. She didn't want to lose her temper. Even if she really really wanted to...

... Founder damn it.

"I think she's helping you with that weight-loss idea you were going on about yesterday," Louise said, sweetly. "You know, helping you not stuff your face with toast which is more honey and butter than bread."

The other girl reddened, which made an interesting contrast to her hair. "What are you even still doing here, Zero?" she retorted. "You didn't even manage to fail at summoning normally. You just succeeded at kidnapping."

"Mmmph?" asked Alma, spoon in her mouth, turning to stare between the raised voices.

"... and look, she's eating the honey just like that!"

"Make your mind up," Louise said, trying her best to act as if she didn't care and the words were not like fire against her soul. "Surely you don't mind a poor innocent child like that getting something sweet. If I did kidnap her, of course. Y-you'd only be getting angry if I summoned her fairly, because that would make her actions my fault." Louise paused for effect. "Fatty," she added.

Given that Marie de Bruxelles was now bordering on the incandescent, Louise was of the opinion she was probably winning this one. She felt Alma shrink up against her, and saw the little girl had her body positioned in that alarming half-raised shoulder, for fear of being hit.

"Just go away," Louise said. "You're frightening her. If you really want to stuff your face with honey, I'm sure another table will have some. Or do you like bullying little girls? Does it make you feel big? Not that you need it," she added, to unexpected sniggering from others around her. That was unusual. Normally she was the target of that sort of thing.

"You know all about being little, right, Zero?" the other girl hissed back, fingers tightening on her wand. "Little success, little height, and really little breasts. Like two flies on a window."

Louise took a deep breath. She was not going to let it get to her, she was not going to let it get to her, she was not going to let it get to her. She was going to ignore it, she was going to ignore it.

It was at that point that Marie de Bruxelles reeled, and fell, crumpling as if she was a doll with her strings cut. She hit one of the maids who had been walking behind her, and cutlery and juice went flying everywhere.

Louise blinked. She hadn't been that angry, had she? "Are... are you all right?" she asked, mostly out of a desire not to be blamed for something that she... didn't think was her fault. Was it? No, she hadn't even got the red vision halo, or the whispering. "Look what happens when you stand in the way of the help, when they're trying to bring us more juice," she added, loudly, to some agreement. "You only have yourself to blame for making such a fuss over some honey."

The other girl was shivering on the floor, trapped under the maid who was trying to get off her.

And thoughtfully, Louise turned her eyes in Alma, who was cold and shaking herself, the spoon in her mouth having fallen out entirely. She stared up at Louise blankly, teeth-chattering.

Yes, it would be a _very_ good idea for Mother to come, Louise decided. A very, very good idea indeed.


	8. Chapter 8

**The Fearful Void - Part 8**

"You're going to be very bored in this," Louise told Alma softly, as they made their way down the corridors, the little girl taking three steps for every two the older one took. "You're not going to understand this and I didn't see any dreams of school or tutors in your dreams, so I don't know if you even have context for why we'd sit quietly writing while a teacher talks at us and... and you don't understand what I'm saying anyway, so I'm not exactly sure why I'm saying it." She paused. "At least we only have classes in the morning, because we have to 'get to know our familiars', which... uh, probably means you'll get to go on the swing again."

Alma stared back up at her. Louise had been mostly thinking of food on her way down to breakfast, so she had not really paid much attention to what the maid Siesta had dressed her in. Now she could see what had to be a heavily brought-in cream gown, probably intended for a child a good few years older than her. Honestly, Louise had to say that it did suited her unfairly well. The cream worked well with her pale skin tone, making her look even more doll-like; this was not helped by the fact that it was too large, and she seemed to be struggling a bit with the floor-length skirt, as if she was not used to such clothes.

There were also some food stains on the front. Louise frowned, and went to reach for a handkerchief to try to remove the porridge splashes, but stopped herself. There wasn't time for this now. Together, they made their way to the classroom, and she made her way towards a seat in the back of the hall. This wasn't usual for her; she enjoyed History despite the teacher, but common sense dictated that it would probably be best to avoid being noticed.

It would also give her a chance to write up the letter when it looked like she was taking notes. She already knew basically everything they were doing in History at the moment, because as a child who sometimes got splitting headaches in bright light she had spent a lot of time indoors in the quiet of the family library. Usually, it was enjoyable to be able to get everything right and not have explosive mishaps. Right now, though, she had too many things on her mind.

The bear-like figure of Professor Onau, who taught history swept in. He was a large, hearty man with a mane of black hair and a great big bushy beard, but his eyes were small, dark and watchful. "Class," he announced, in his customary manner, "I am quite aware that you summoned your familiars yesterday. And anyone... I repeat, _anyone_who thinks that this is going to get them out of paying attention in my class is most sadly mistaken."

Alma said something softly in her native language beside Louise, but otherwise sat impassively, hands on her lap, staring out from under her fringe.

Hands clasped behind him, the man began to pace up and down. "Now, I do so hope that you handed in all those essays I demanded of you over these recent holidays. I have already begun marking them, and let me tell you this, the only people who will suffer more than those who have handed in poor quality essays - and there are several of you already - are those who have not handed them in at all. I am not best pleased at such people. Now, sadly, the submission deadline is closed, and," he smiled, "if one were to try to hand them in, they would have to talk to me personally. To which I say merely that my office door is always open."

The bear of a man coughed, and settled his mantle. "Now, with those fripperies and pleasantries out of the way, we will return to our task. History, that art of nobility, of majesty, of the turnings of the years and artistry itself." He stopped, and paused. "Malicorne!" he barked, settling at random on a victim, "explain who the last king we covered was?"

The chubby target of attention went white. "Um... um... um," he stammered, "K-king Louis XV?"

"No, you stupid boy!" the man snapped. "We were covering the period of Imperial Romalia, and hence there _was_no Tristainian king at the time. The country was divided into four Imperial satrapies, ruled over by tax-farmers on behalf of the Romalian Emperor who was, at the time of the... dynasty..." he left it hanging...

"... erm..."

Sighing to herself, Louise ran over her list of mental priorities in her head. Firstly, she had to finish this letter to Mother neatly. Secondly, she had to think about how to teach Alma more Tristainian. Thirdly, she had to think about the magical signs Alma was showing, which... well, resembled what she sometimes did by accident in some ways. Fourthly... unless this was part of thirdly... she had to think about whatever had happened to Marie de Bruxelles, which Louise was almost certain was not her fault, which meant it was probably Alma. Fourthly or fifthly or... next, whatever, she should probably take into consideration what the fact that she did not have a proper familiar meant. And...

... okay, that was probably enough thinking for now. She had a letter to write. Uncorking her ink, and checking that her quill was trimmed, Louise unfolded the charcoal notes, and began a formal copy of it.

She was about half-done when she paused to trim her quill, and flex her hand which was cramping up. She had only been asked one trivial question so far, which was good, and she had answered it, and she looked liked she was making attentive notes. Louise glanced beside her. Alma was sprawled sideways on the seats, curled up into a foetal ball. Her breathing indicated she was asleep, a strand of her hair rhythmically drifting backwards and forwards in front of her mouth. 'Lucky her', Louise thought, wryly amused. Clearly the boredom of all these words in a foreign language, when the seats were comfortable and it was a little stuffy had been too much for the younger girl. She too was feeling tired from disturbed sleep, but she couldn't just fall asleep like that. She had to pay attention and...

"Ah, Miss de la Valliere, you have been quiet today," the burly teacher said, bear-like eyes gleaming. "Surely you won't mind explaining to us how important the 5200s were, would you? Eight hundred years ago?"

... answer questions. Louise swallowed, and stood. "The Crimson Fever, Professor. It killed a large number of people, and Imperial Romalia collapsed, because... because the armies they used to keep their satrapies paying taxes died of the fever, the infected bleeding out from... from everywhere. This led to a collapse of society, as the mages who maintained the golem infrastructure of the Imperial roadrider network died and the Fever infected their golems too, and famine and plague together hit the cities. It was not... it was not until Saint Michael, wielding the sacred Void, undid the golems, that the fever passed, for the Emperors of Imperial Romalia had offended the Lord with their blasphemous ways and their usurpation of the authority of the Pope. As penance for men, He cast down the hubristic empire by sending the Fever, and the appearance of the saint was a sign of His forgiveness."

The man glared at her from beneath beetle-like eyebrows. "Are you sure about that?" he asked, delight in his voice. "The plague infected the golems? Do you realise what you are saying?"

Louise bit her lip, and tried not to quaver. "I think that was how the book I read put it, sir," she said. Or was it? Dammit, she normally didn't have to try to remember things quite this quickly, because she normally paid attention.

"Inaccurate," the teacher sniffed. "Although the golem infrastructure of Imperial Romalia was used as a messenger-relay, they still only entrusted their messages to living men, carried in palanquins or pulled in chariots. The messengers between areas were the ones who spread the fever, not the golems themselves."

Louise winced. "Yes sir," she said.

"Sit," the teacher ordered. "Well, despite Miss de la Valliere's interesting opinions on the capacity of golems to get ill," he paused for laughter, "she nevertheless is mostly correct. From the fall of Imperial Romalia, the world is cast into barbarism once more. Monsters roam the wastes, and ghouls and vampires are seen in horrific numbers, those infected by the fever who both did and did not die... no doubt because the weight of their sins was such that they could not be permitted even the blessing of unmaking. Once again, the true Brimiric lines rise, shown by their knowledge of the ways of the sacred Founder, and..." a bell sounded, "... we shall resume next Firesday." The bulking man swept up his books from the table, and stomped out.

Louise paused, while everyone else clattered and stood to leave. Beside her, curled up on the seat, Alma slept, and she would need to wake her.

But she was more concerned about the fact that Marie de Bruxelles had not shown up to this class at all.


	9. Chapter 9

**The Fearful Void - Part 9**

"It's... it was cold," the girl managed in response to the question, still shaking. Marie de Bruxelles had so many blankets and shawls draped over her that she was a head protruding from a mound of draperies, but she still shook, and her lips were numb and blue. "It... I don't know how long it lasted. I... I don't think it's stopped. Everything around me is wavy, still. The lights aren't as bright as they should be. And," she coughed, deep lung-hacking exhalations as if she was trying to empty her lungs of fluid, "it was like I was drowning. It's still there. A tightness in my chest."

"Medically, she's fine," the healer whispered to Professor Colbert. "The cold is all in her mind; her body temperature is normal, even if her lips have gone like that. I have performed all the usual diagnostics on her... I suspected tonsillitis with that kind of fainting, and apart from a mild, early onset of what could have been flu - which I cured, because you know how that can spread around students - she is fine."

Grasping his hands behind him, the balding man stared up at the white-painted ceiling in thought, paying attention to the magelights rather than the shaking form of Marie de Bruxelles. This was another mystery involving Louise de la Vallière. She had always been odd, in her time at the Academy; pale, her health somewhat delicate, prone to headaches and sickness, and with a poor control of her magic. She had few friends. He suspected that she had spent a lot of time indoors as a child, socialising little with other children, and her excellent academic record and bookish proclivities supported that hypothesis. The man had tried his best to help her, because at times she cut a pitiful figure, and as a teacher it really was his duty - and he owed her mother that much.

But this new mystery was different. Her summoning portal had been warped, different. Her would-familiar looked to be a young girl - one who was magical. But when he had touched her, he had see... what he had seen. She had been inside his mind, in the worst, deepest parts he tried not to think of and tried to avoid.

Most mages never learned to do such a thing. A few. The pet torturers of the Church, holy nuns who did terrible deeds to men in the belief they were saving their souls, for one, and it was rumoured that the Germanian emperor had such a man among his closest advisers, though which one it was changed in each retelling.

Maybe Miss de la Vallière _should _bind the dark-haired little girl called Alma, for all that it could bind possibly-a-mage into service. Maybe the familiar marks would keep that power from spilling out, if she was a mage. And she surely could be controlled if she was Louise's familiar, prevented from using such powers against people.

And this was where the fact that Louise's power also was unconstrained, and strange events happened around her had to be taken into consideration.

"So," he said, while he thought, "Marie, please, can you go over what happened precisely again. You were having breakfast when..."

The girl sighed in frustration which turned into more coughing, but began again. "I was just... just having breakfast when I wanted honey for my fruit. Then I found that Louise... well, that little girl she kidnapped had it, and was eating it all, right from the pot. Just like... like that. I asked for it, she snapped back at me and started calling me 'fat' for no reason at all, and then... it just happened." Coughing perhaps excessively pathetically, Marie glared at the teacher. "This... is her fault."

"It is a little hard to believe," Colbert said, not letting any of his actual feelings show on his face. "Did you touch her? Did she chant, or use her wand?"

"Oh, you know she does stuff when she gets angry!" the girl snapped. "Sir," she added.

The healer shot a glance at the teacher. "Well, mostly she just ends up in here with headaches and nosebleeds," he said. "She's never done anything like this... at worst, there have been cuts and bruises and some burns from when she..." he coughed politely, "... makes a mistake with a spell."

Colbert made an agreeing noise. "What makes you think it was her?" he asked. "Beyond the fact that you were arguing, of course."

"I felt it!" Marie's eyes were red with tears. "Oh, of course you won't believe it. I didn't touch her, she didn't even go for her wand, or chant, or... or anything. She... she looks all innocent and sickly. But I felt this... this _hate _and then... I was drowning. Drowning in this... this cold and fear and... I can't..." her voice cracked.

"Drowning?" Colbert echoed. "Like water magic, as if she... or someone else... was making water in your lungs?"

"No, it..." Marie de Bruxelles took a deep breath, only to start coughing again. "It was exactly like I was drowning. When... when I was seven, I fell through ice. It was winter. We were riding, and there was snow everywhere, and we... we could normally take horses across the thick ice, because we were at my grandfather's estate on the northern coast and that's the way you can cross some rivers without having to detour around to bridges if it's cold enough and it _was_ cold enough, only this time... it wasn't quite strong enough and me and my pony went through the ice." Red-eyed, she sniffed and coughed, the picture of misery. "I was... I was under water and it was _so cold_ and I couldn't breathe and there was ice above me and... and have you heard the noise a drowning horse makes from underwater? That's all I could hear and my lungs were burning and it hurt and I tried beating against the ice but couldn't do anything and... and my grandmother pulled me out fairly quickly, but it felt like forever. _Forever_."

She swallowed, a gasping, shuddering motion.

"It was exactly like that. _Exactly _like that. And ever since then I've been terrified of the cold and of water like that and I... I was suddenly back there. And... and it... it feels like the dark water could be anywhere. Behind the walls, maybe. Like... like it's just waiting for me. And it sounds stupid, but... that's how it feels."

There was silence in the infirmary.

"I see," said Professor Colbert, jaw squaring. "Please, stay here as long as you need to get better. I will need to think about these accusations, and possibly talk to the headmaster. This is a very serious matter."


	10. Chapter 10

**The Fearful Void - Part 10**

With a relaxed sigh, Louise sank into the bath, her hair fanning out behind her in the water like a bridal veil. Staring up at the white marble ceiling of the communal baths, she let her mind go blank and let the heat sink into her muscles. Beside her, there was a faint splashing as Alma lowered herself into the water, her skinny body huddling up against Louise's. Most people didn't choose to bathe this early, which meant that the two of them practically had the entire girls' side to themselves.

Well. Today had been... interesting. Alma had mostly dozed through the other lessons in the morning. Louise was pathetically grateful that the little girl had been asleep when she had, once again, managed to ruin a simple clay-to-copper transmution spell. The clay had twisted spasmodically, writhed, and then detonated, splattering a fair amount of the classroom with dirt. That was another uniform which was in her washing pile. But it had _almost_ been a golem, sort of, given it had shown signs of animation. So she had _almost_ made a golem. Which was _almost _a success.

That didn't change that she had meant to be trying to turn the clay into copper, but that was a more minor point compared to her _almost _success.

Of course, in the afternoon, when everyone else was off 'getting to know their familiars', Louise had been looking after Alma, who seemed to be rather more awake after her naps. This had been a small issue, because Louise had been dozing off herself by then. That maid, Siesta, had been a godsend. She had found them, and it had been easy enough to leave Alma on the swing with the maid watching her so she could go hand that letter to her mother over to a courier. Which was another weight off her mind. She had returned to find Alma distressed, but that had ended as soon as she had shown up.

Which was a problem, Louise thought to herself, sinking deeper into the water and trying to pick a bit of clay out of her hair. The little girl got alarmed when she was separated from her. This was going to be difficult, if she couldn't do... well, anything without taking a seven - or maybe six, Louise still wasn't sure of her age - year old with her, that was going to be a real issue in the long run.

She glanced sideways at Alma, who was blowing bubbles. The little girl noticed Louise's attention, and smiled faintly, the corners of her mouth turning up.

Great. Now she was feeling guilty about feeling inconvenienced. "Come on," she told the little girl seriously, "let's get your hair washed properly, how about that? We can see if it looks better and less stringy with a proper clean." She paused. "Bath-hair," she tried, miming as best she could hair-washing.

Alma stared at her, and nodded, once. "Yes," she said. "Baath haeer yes."

By the time other people started to arrive, Alma's head was - save for her eyes and mouth - practically covered in lather, and Louise was trying to get the bubbles out of her nose from where the little girl had felt it was amusing to rub her head against Louise's face.

"No!" Louise warned, rubbing her nose to giggles from the girl. "No! That wasn't funny at all, Alma. Pyah. Yuck."

Alma chattered back in her own language, followed with more giggles.

"What's the matter?" Kirche von Zerbst said, the Germanian girl lazily paddling over from the other side of the large communal pool. "I didn't see you with the others, Zero; is that little pile of bubbles your familiar? Everything was _very _strange with you yesterday, you know that!"

Louise glared at the scion of her family's old rivals. The von Zerbsts were Germanian nobility who traced their ancestry back to the invading Germani tribes of a thousand years ago who had conquered the plague-ridden lands of Old Tristain, and in the last millennium the families of de la Valliére and von Zerbst had arisen and warred over territory, land, money and spouses. It was a matter of utmost honour to not be friendly with her.

Also, Kirche was decidedly amorous with the boys, and hot-headed - indeed, she was decidedly volatile, so it wasn't exactly hard for the rather more repressed and equally explosive youngest daughter of the de la Valliéres to argue with her.

"No, this is _not _my familiar," she retorted. "Because I, unlike you, have a sense of dignity and proper manners, and so I am not so desperate as to bind someone who is most probably a mage, which would be completely improper." She sniffed. "Meanwhile, well, again, because I have a sense of manners, I will not mention how desperate you are to roll onto your back for males."

Kirche grinned. "I'm giving you a... I'm going to call that a seven," she said, the darker-skinned girl stretching out to her full height. "Good defence, snappy comeback, but the use of the tired old 'Kirche isn't frigid' means of attack loses you points."

"When did you start grading such things!" Louise snapped.

"When did I start grading such things?" Kirche echoed. "I'm not sure. You know how dreadfully forgetful I am, apparently because all I can think about is men. Tabitha! You can remember things? When did I start grading the Zero on her insults?"

The other girl, even shorter than Louise with her pale blue hair in a page-boy cut sat on the edge of the pool, towel still on, feet dangling in the water. She was reading a book. "Just now," she said with a strong Gallian accent, not looking up from her book.

"Just now, apparently," the red-head said cheerfully. "Also, Tabby, you're going to have to wash some time, so you should probably put the book down. So, come on, Zero. Who's the little pile of bubbles who napped her way through most of the lessons this morning... really, I think she's onto a good thing there. She's actually pretty cute, you know."

Louise arched an eyebrow. "You. Evaluating cuteness?"

"Yep! She's tiny and petite. Just like you."

Louise muttered to herself, incoherent phrases of mild annoyance seeping out. To avoid having to answer, she turned to Alma, and went to try to help the girl get the bubbles out of her hair. Alma was staring at Kirche. Specifically, wide-eyed, she was staring at Kirche's chest. Her eyes went to Louise, then over to Tabitha, and then over to some of the other girls. And then back to Kirche. Her red-yellow gaze narrowed, and she said something in her native language which could only have been an empathic declaration from the tone and the way she crossed her arms over her own chest. "Yes?" she concluded.

Kirche worked her mouth. "What did she say?" she asked Louise.

The pink-haired girl shrugged. "I have no idea," she said honestly. "No one seems to understand her."

"Well, was a it a compliment?"

Louise pouted. "It was an insult, _clearly_," she said.

Kirche grinned. "I don't think it was, Valliére," she said, smirking. "Aww, wasn't that sweet of her, to be so kind?" she announced, rhetorically. "What a cute, innocent little girl, who has to put up with the mean Zero trying to misinterpret her words."

"Says you! She's never seen anything... anything so bloated in her life! And don't even think of trying to corrupt her!"

"But, no, seriously, really, you'll do well with her," the red-head said, smiling. "You have a lot in common with that little girl. You'll be able to look at the world from a similar perspective, for one."

"Oh, thank... wait." Louise scowled. "Oh, ha ha. Very funny. Not."

"I'm glad you liked it, my beloved rival, and..."

"Both didn't understand," Tabitha announced in Gallian-accented Tristainian, lying back with a flannel over her forehead and eyes. "Stop being loud."

There was a guttural chatter of words from Alma, still covered in bubbles, and she jabbed a finger at Kirche.

The older girl grinned, and moved in closer, sculling over while floating on her back. "I wonder if she's not used to people with skin like mine?" she said, cheerfully. "How old is she? I mean, she looks... maybe Albionese, maybe from the north of Gallia. I wonder if she's seen people with darker skin before? I mean, sheesh, Louise, she's as pale as you are. Or Tabitha."

"It's a sign of breeding and culture," the pink-haired girl said, archly.

"It's a sign that you don't get out in the sun enough," Kirche said. "All three of you. You and Tabby are either having headaches or reading... hey, know if she's a big reader too?"

"She can't speak the language, why would she be able to read it?"

Kirche turned over in the water, hair hanging wetly around her. "I can't speak Albionese, but I can read it," she said. "Bet you didn't even think to try it and... hey, um... do you know if she can swim?"

Panicked, Louise turned to see Alma's head underwater, a scum of bubbles floating from where she had slipped under away from the shallow edge and into the deeper parts of the bath. Sucking in a breath, she pushed off from the side, and managed to collide with Kirche, who had also gone to recover the little girl. Between the two of them, they pulled Alma back to the shallow seats at the edge of the bath, as the little girl spluttered water and clung to both their hands with a vice-like grip.

"Um," said Louise.

"Yes. Um," said Kirche.

"I shouldn't argue with you like this when I'm meant to be watching her. And I should have thought about the fact that she's small, and so even the bath is out of her depth."

Kirche nodded. "Yes. And... um, how do you get her to let go of your hand?"

"I'm not really sure. She is a bit... clingy." Louise paused. She might as well say it. "I get the feeling that whoever she was with before didn't treat her that well," she said, softly. "I had to treat some nasty bruises on her, like someone had grabbed her; you can just about see the fading bruises on her shoulders."

Kirche's eyes widened at the almost-gone greenish-yellow markings, now she looked for them. "I see," she said, sympathy in her voice. "That's... ouch." Shuffling up to sit next to Alma on the benches, she bought her around into a hug against her generous bosom. "She's rather pretty, you know," she said, softly, as Alma let go of Louise's hand, and clung on tightly to Kirche, squeezing her hard. The Germanian girl swallowed. "Look, Z... Louise," she said. "This probably isn't too fun for you, either, having to look after a little girl rather than having a familiar."

Louise nodded. "I'll cope," she said, softly. "They've assigned me a maid to help."

"Yeah, well." Kirche shrugged, feeling Alma tremble against her like a small animal. "I've got a little sister about her age, so if you want some help..." she trailed off. "Of course," she added, more cheerfully, "I'll still make fun of you when you do it. And point out that you're asking a von Zerbst for help. She's just cuter and more adorable than you, and me with my generous heart is just drawn to help."

Louise managed a smirk, though it felt forced. "You mean generous waistline," she corrected.

"The term is generous _figure_," Kirche said. "Honestly, I don't even speak Tristainian as my birth-tongue; it's a silly mistake for you of all people to make."

"Be _quiet_," Tabitha stated, to general agreement from the other girls in the bath. "Too much _noise_."


	11. Chapter 11

**The Fearful Void - Part 11**

Alma waved goodbye to Kirche as the girls went back to their rooms after dinner, finally letting go of the Germanian's hand. She burrowed her head in Louise's side as the two of them followed the maid Siesta, who had come to talk to them at the end of pudding, back to Louise's room.

"My lady," the dark-haired girl said, gesturing around the room, "as you can see, I asked some of the men to help move a bed for Alma upstairs. It is against the corner there, as there was empty floor space there, but if you wish for it to be moved, please speak with me and I can get help."

The bed looked to be one of the spares from the guest rooms. It was not as elaborate as Louise's, and considerably narrower, but that suited her just fine. She strongly suspected that Alma would not be sleeping there much. "It's fine," she said. "I think Alma will be all right with it... to be honest, I think she's clingy enough that she may end up with me. And it's not like she will take up too much space."

"No doubt," the maid said, turning her head away slightly with a smile in her eyes. "My lady, I have also procured additional clothes for the young lady from the tailors on staff, using the measurements I made when dressing her this morning. If they are still not be up to her standards, I am authorised by the housekeeper to accompany you to Bruxelles to aid in obtaining garments for her, although only a limited sum has been put aside for such things, and you will have to make up any shortcoming."

Louise raised her eyebrows. She hadn't noticed the maid measuring Alma this morning. "Very good," she said, biting on her lip. "Ah, yes, Siesta," she said, reaching for some of the papers she had taken from morning classes, "can you please entertain her and ready her for bed? I have some assigned work I need to do."

Was that a hint of weariness in the maid's expression, before it was suppressed? "Yes, my lady," Siesta said. "Come on, Alma," she said, leaning down towards the girl. "I bet you've had a busy day, haven't you?"

Louise blushed pinkly, as the little girl chattered back to Siesta in her language, accompanied by several "See-easter". She wasn't going to admit to the maid that she had almost let Alma drown in the bath. That would be very embarrassing, and she had the distinct feeling that the maid would judge her harshly for it. Founder, how was she meant to know about that sort of thing? She didn't have younger siblings? Who could have guessed that they would go out of their depth when they weren't being watched and turn out not being able to swim? Anyway, _she _could swim at that age. Her mother had been very certain about all her daughters learning, even Cattleya. Actually, her older sister could swim like a fish; it was one of the modes of exercise open to her which she could do without going too far from the house, and she often said she felt better in the water. It was relaxing, and lessened the headaches.

Sitting herself down at her desk, she unfolded the papers, and sighed to herself. An essay for the day after tomorrow for history; that was going to be an annoyance. She was tired and somewhat lacking in sleep, but she really should try to get at least half of it done today. There were still at least two bells until she should think about bed, and if she didn't do it today, it would be worse tomorrow when she had more work.

Time passed. The scratching of Louise's quill against parchment was the background noise against Siesta's impromptu language lessons, which became the maid teaching the little girl to play some kind of card game. Despite the language barrier, it seemed to be working, not least because it was not exactly hard to explain "you want to match up two cards from the entire turned-over pack". The pink-haired girl smiled as she looked over at the pair sitting on the floor. Either Siesta was letting her win, or Alma was really very good at working out what cards were the right ones.

Or the maid was terrible at the game. That was always a possibility.

The next bell rang, and Louise stretched. The essay was probably a good half-done by now. And more importantly, her hand was beginning to cramp up. But... argh. She probably needed to look at that mathematics problem about land management. At least so she could say that she had looked at it. And she could at least think about it; sometimes she managed to even get work done in her dreams. That was one advantage of remembering them and being able to act, she supposed.

She was just going to take a break and get a drink of water, though. Maybe with some ice in it, if she had any left. She did not.

Louise groaned. Another thing to do tomorrow. More ice. And... argh, she needed to think about seeing if Alma needed a wand and she also would have Professor Passcen tomorrow and she was a nasty piece of work with how much homework she set so she needed to get even more done and argh argh argh.

Siesta watched Louise bang her head into the chest in the corner with mixed amusement as concern.

"Loo-ays, See-easter?" Alma asked, tugging on the maid's sleeve with one nightshirted arm.

"I have no idea," Siesta replied, spreading her palms with a wide shrug.

The little girl giggled, and copied the gesture, pulling a funny expression. Siesta giggled too. "Okay," she said, "now, you won't understand this, but my little brothers and sisters used to go to bed better when I told them a story, and I'm _hoping_that the tone of voice will be enough for you that you'll understand enough." She smiled. "Also, I'll do hand gestures," she offered. "And pull funny faces."

Alma stared blankly at her.

"Well, it's worth a try," Siesta said, mostly to herself, as she guided Alma into bed, and tucked her in. Sitting on the side of her bed, she rolled her eyes at Louise. "My lady," she said, trying to sound the image of the perfect servant, "please, don't bang your head like that. I may get in trouble if you are found horribly concussed."

She was glared at by Louise, who was apparently trying to work out whether she was being made fun of. Siesta kept her expression placid and subservient, and tried very hard not to even crack a smile. Eventually, Louise gave up, and returned, muttering, to her desk, to continue work.

"Well, now," Siesta said to Alma, putting a hand on her brow. "The story starts a long, long time ago. A long, long, long time ago, back when my great-grandmother was just a young woman. Now, she was a daughter of a poor healer, barely noble at all, and she was the youngest daughter. Still, she was a mage, too, although not a very powerful one, but she was trained by her mother as a healer too. She was not going to inherit the title, though, because one of her older brothers was also a mage, and that meant that she was not going to be a noble unless she married another noble, or she did some great and powerful deed to win the favour of the crown.

"Now, as it stands, one day, she was collecting moss from the ruined town near our home, and tat was a very messy job, because she had to crawl and clamber across old mucky yucky ruins to get up to the high places which were in the sunlight, because she needed to get the moss to make potions to make people get better. And she had been at it for several hours, so she was all messy and dirty and sweaty. And so when a bird flew at her when she was filling her pouch with moss," Siesta locked her fingers together, and did her best crow impersonation, "she let go, and fell down, and - luckily for her - managed to fall in a pool. Sploosh."

Alma giggled softly, and yawned.

"Yes, and that was when she saw it. Down in the ruins, in one of the basements under the streets, there was this odd blue light coming from a crack, almost like a water mage was doing something. And since she was a water mage, she pulled out her wand, and went looking, because she wanted to be a hero of the Crown, and finding out about a secret alchemy circle would be a brave act and she wanted to be rewarded with a title.

"What she found down there, however, wasn't a mage. Instead, there was this bright light, like lightning, running over one wall. And this was very strange, because everyone knows that only the most powerful air mages can control lightning like that, and that wasn't what she expected at all. So she crept closer - and remember, she was all wet and smelly by this point, not at all like most heroes, but she was still being really brave - and she came closer and closer. And what it really, really looked like, she thought, was like there was lightning trapped under the wall.

"So she, because she was very brave, poked the wall with her wand, drawing the water off her - and drying out her clothes - to make ice, which she used to break down the wall. And what did she find down there, but a man, covered in lightning produced by his enchanted armour. She didn't think he was a man, at first, because he was dressed in black leather and plate armour and so in the dark light he looked like a statue, but then she saw he was still breathing. And there were other men there, too, knights in armour, and some of them were very badly injured." Siesta shook her head, sadly. "Very, very badly injured. And there was broken glass everywhere, despite the fact that they were underground, so she suspected that perhaps broken alchemical equipment _was_to blame.

"Well, because she was a water mage, she knew her duty to God - who had gifted her with those talents - was to use them, and to save and preserve life as best she could. So she tried as best she could to stem the bleeding from the musket wounds the men had, and save as many as she could. And one by one she managed to move them up into the sunlight, saving the one who sparked for last. But before she could move him, he woke up, and then that was when she got worried, because he was a foreigner and she couldn't understand what he said. But she managed - because she was clever - to explain to him that she was trying to help, not least because she could show him that she had helped bandage up his men. And he dispelled the magic of his enchanted armour and took off his helmet, and he turned out to be a handsome young man, with short dark hair.

"He followed her back to the village, and there she got her brother and her mother, and they went out and helped the men of the stranger, and due to their skill and power working together, only two of them died. And so they took them back to the village, and slowly the men recovered - for they had been very badly injured, and likewise, they learned the language. Some of them, the story said, headed east, looking to return to their homeland and their mission, but the leader of the men, and two of his followers - who were female knights - stayed. One of the female knights went off and - it is said - tried to become a knight of Tristain, despite her lack of magic, while one of the others grew ill and died the next summer, from some unknown illness that even the best healers could not cure.

"But the man... ah, the man, he fell in love with my great-grandmother, and she with him, and she got married to this strange knight from abroad. And she knew that for all that she had never got a title from the Crown, she had found _her _knight, and he said for the rest of his life that he was happier here than he had been on his duties, and in time they had children, and died when God saw they had spent enough time on this earth." Siesta looked sideways at Alma, who was asleep, lulled off by her voice. "The end," she said, softly, smoothing down her skirt.

The silence was broken by Louise's voice. "Hmm," she said, staring at Siesta over steepled fingers.

The maid dipped her eyes. "What is it, my lady?"

"This great-grandfather of yours," the noble girl said, narrowing her eyes. "What language did he speak? Was he Germanian or Gallian or... what?"

Siesta blinked. "No," she said, slowly. "My grandfather said his father didn't speak either of them, even until he died; he only spoke Tristainian slowly. And," she added, "no, it wasn't Albionese or Romalian either." She narrowed her eyes. "My lady," she said, softly, glancing at Louise, "you suspect that..."

"It's something I'm thinking," Louise said, chewing on her upper lip. "If the men went east... maybe both them and Alma were from Rub al Khali, or somewhere beyond it... Ind or Cathay. If they're from the same place. But neither of them were from around the Brimiric countries, so... it might be at least _something _to find out where Alma is from." There was a look of what could only be anger in Louise's eyes, and Siesta wondered at the source.

She settled for, "My lady?" because it was hard to go wrong with such a response.

"Did your great-grandfather leave anything?" the pink-haired girl asked. "Any writing, any vox-crystals with his words on them... though that isn't very likely? Anything we could show to Alma to see if she recognised it?"

"Um." Siesta tilted her head. "I think the words on his tombstone are written in his native language, and there might be other things... and we have his armour, and that has writing on it."

"Hmm," Louise said, clearly. "Interesting. We may have to take a trip to... wherever you come from... during the holidays. We can have Alma learn to speak properly - at least a little bit - and we can see if your ancestor was from the same place as her." Louise smiled down at the maid, which was an accomplishment when both of them were sitting. "And it's likely, if I ask the headmaster, that you'll be able to come with us, so it can be like a holiday for you, and a chance to see your family."

Irritation at the noble arrogance warred with the fact that... yes, it would be a holiday and a chance to see her family... in Siesta. "Thank you, my lady," she said, "that is most generous."

"I should be thanking you," Louise said magnanimously. "You've provided a clue I would have probably never found on my own."

You aren't actually thanking me, Siesta thought mutinously.

"Siesta, you may go," the noble told her. "I'm going to bed myself, and she appears to be asleep. You did a fine job getting her to sleep like that, and letting me get my homework done."

"Thank you, my lady," the maid said, standing and courtesying. "It is my duty. By your leave?"

"Yes, of course," Louise said, already changing for bed herself.


	12. Chapter 12

**The Fearful Void - Part 12**

The sound of breathing filled the room. Slowly, softly, something else moved through the moonlit room, a flicker in the shadow. Pale and wan, the figure was caught in the silvery light for just a moment, and the tears streaming from her eyes gleamed like mercury in the darkness.

A bed scraped against the floor, and the ceiling was lit in red and orange. Claws skittered against the glass of the window, scarring it.

Something wormed its way into Louise's bed and snuggled up against her back, pressing a tear-damp face against her nightdress as two skinny arms hugged the older girl tightly.

* * *

...

* * *

Fire died in dark cold waters, and Louise broke out of her fearful reverie. The crimson flames and corpse-like _things _that moved and twitched and writhed and screamed her name in forgotten tongues no longer filled her mind; now she drowned in freezing cold.

Gasping, choking, she broke the lake of the hidden garden of the de la Valliére estates, dragging herself onto the shore as ice and mildew and pond-weed and soot cascaded from her. In the warm light, she gasped and spluttered coughing up smoke and night-black water onto green grass.

Slowly, as she recovered, Louise became aware of something pressed against the small of her back; something warm. Twisting her head around, she caught sight of Alma, dressed in that same strange red dress, her feet bloody and twined around her own.

The little girl caught her gaze. "_Louise_."

The older girl shifted around, still coughing and spluttering, until she ended up sitting upright with Alma on her lap. "What are you doing here? And..." she looked around, "... why am I here, too? This dream doesn't normally happen and I was... I was drowning."

"_I couldn't sleep._"

Louise squinted. "Hmm. Well, I wanted to talk with you, anyway." The pink-haired girl paused, catching her breath in the dream. "What did I want to say?" Internally she sighed. It was the right thing to do. "Well, the first thing I have to say sorry for is not watching close enough in the baths." She pouted. "It was all von Zerbst's fault for distracting me, anyway."

"_Don't fight_," Alma whispered. "_I want you to like each other. You're both nice to me. That means you're both nice. Just like Siesta._"

Louise sighed. If Alma was going to assume that everyone who was nice to her should be friends, that was going to be a complication. "And what did you say about her udders, anyway?"

"_Her udders? Cows have udders. Not people._"

The older girl opened her mouth. She just didn't have the heart to explain the long and fully justified reasons she had for disliking the von Zerbsts, and Kirche von Zerbst in particular, to that imploring, confused-looking face. Right and correct though those reasons were. "I meant her... her chest," Louise 'corrected', cupping her hands over her breasts.

Alma squinted, and crossed her arms. "_Not if you're going to use it to argue,_" she said after some moment's thought.

"I won't."

"_I'll only tell you if you learn English_," Alma said, smiling.

"Learn what?" Louise paused. "Is that the name of your language?" Alma nodded. "Well... what if I teach you Tristainian?"

"_I'm learning it anyway. From you and Siesta and Kirche. But you should learn my language too_." Alma crossed her arms. "_It's only fair_."

Louise smiled, and then shook her head. "I should get you some colouring chalks and the like. You could draw things to help communicate, and it would give you something to do during the day."

The little girl pouted at that, and to distract her Louise asked her next question. "Alma," she asked. "Why did Marie de Bruxelles fall down like that? Why were you cold like that?"

Alma began to shiver, closing in on herself, squirming out of Louise's hold.

"Alma," Louise said, a slightly strict note entering her voice.

The little girl swallowed, shaking, and screwed her hands up into balls. "_She was going to take you away,_" Alma said softly. "_She went from dislike to fury and that means she was going to put you in solitary and they don't let you see people there and that means you wouldn't be there._"

Louise blinked heavily. "What?" she said, after a moment's thought. "I don't... what?"

Alma squared her jaw. "_I won't let anyone hurt you! No one gets to take you away! Not ever! So I went to her bad time and took her with me. It was just below the surface. She really doesn't like cold water._" She shivered. "_It wasn't a very bad bad time compared to some bad times, but it hurt and it was cold. But I couldn't let her take you away._"

The older girl worked her mouth. "I... no, no, no," she protested. "No, no, not at all like that, Alma!" She saw the little girl drop into that pathetic half-crouch, her shoulder raised. "I'm not going to hit you!" she snapped at the dark-haired girl. "I mean... ah! Founder damn it all!" She let out a slow breath, and took it in, practising her breathing exercises in her dreams. "I... Alma. No. People... people... people can be angry at each other without doing more! And I... look, Marie is mean and stupid... and fat. But she's only a bi... a female dog who goes after me because she stuffs her face with sugars and sweet things and honey, while I can eat what I like." She frowned for a moment, and patted her chest. "Even if I wish I _could_ put on weight at least in _some _places. That doesn't matter."

Alma blinked. "_I'm confused,"_she whispered.

"Perhaps that wasn't the clearest," Louise admitted. "But she's only mean and stupid because she's a petty little fat brat, not because she can do anything to me." The pink-haired girl tilted her head. "Okay, the worst she could do is like... slap me, and then she'd get in trouble with the teachers and I'd probably manage to get a few good blows in and she'd be the one who got in trouble for starting it. That's why it's always better to make her angry about being fat than to get angry yourself."

The little pale girl stared at her.

Louise shifted under her gaze. "And I have a good reason to not get angry," she said in her own defence. "When I get angry, bad things happen, because I lose control of my magic. So things get broken, so I can't get too angry or upset or anything."

"_Me too,_" Alma said, her voice a husky whisper. "_I... I... very bad things happen and I get headaches and bleed and it hurts and I can feel everything. Everything._"

Louise sighed. "And that's why I wanted to talk with you," she said gently, squatting down on the grass so the girl's head was level with her own. "You have magic," she said, simply. "The Detect Magic spell reveals that you're magical, you look vaguely noble especially with those eyes, and I... and my older sister and my mother get headaches and sometimes have problems stopping our magic from doing things. I don't know if your people don't know about magic, because I think they're from somewhere in the Far East and people aren't meant to have proper magic there, or if they're just cruel, but... Alma, you're a mage, I think."

"_I... magic,_" Alma breathed. "_Like a princess? Like you and like... like witches and wizards and people in stories?_"

Louise chuckled. "Actually, Princess Henrietta was one of my friends when I was a child," she said. "I saw less of her after I was thirteen, and things happened... after her father, the Prince Consort died, but I'm certainly her loyal friend. And if you only think it happens in stories," the older girl puffed up her chest, "well, there's no question that they have no idea how to teach you properly."

Alma blinked heavily, tears welling up. "_I... you... there might be a way to stop bad things happening?_" she whispered. "_I... might be able to control this. They... they didn't want to... they didn't... bad things happen and I sometimes cause them and sometimes just feel them and..._" she broke down.

Louise knelt down, and embraced Alma tightly. "It's hard," she confessed. "I have to work on my temper, and I'm useless at getting the right magic out. I blow things up when I mean to turn them into other things, and can't do most spells at all. But I'm getting better at not having accidents!"

Alma merely sobbed into her shoulder within the dream.

"When we wake up, I'm going to show you the breathing things, like my mother taught me," Louise said firmly. "They really do work. It's all about keeping under control. A proper mage is like steel, their mind honed and perfectly under their control, obedient to their liege and righteous to their inferiors, and your honour and your duties demand that you keep your emotions muted. And..." her voice caught in her throat, "... and being a mage on your own would be just the _worst_. You've got me now, and von Zerbst is going to help out, and my mother will be here in less than a week, I hope. I don't know where you're from, exactly, but I promise you. On my honour as a noble, I will try my best... my very best to be better to you and try to help, yes?"

She took a breath.

"Just, please, Alma. Please, please, please. Can you please do this much for me? Don't... don't do magic on people if you can avoid it. Especially don't try to 'protect' me when you don't know what you're doing really. I mean..." she paused, "... yes, if when I take you to the capital, bandits with guns and stuff attack, then that's different. But no one is going to attack or do things bad at school." She smiled, and brushed the little girl's hair out of her eyes. "I'll be the one who protects you here, okay?"


	13. Chapter 13

**The Fearful Void – Part 13**

"All right," Louise said, cracking her knuckles as she leant on her windowsill back in her room. It was Firesday today, and lessons had ended earlier. And that meant it was the first real chance she had for a little bit of experimentation. The weather looked like it was clearing up and the sun was out, even if the ground would still be wet from the rain in the right. And having the vegetation damp and non-flammable was probably a good thing for what she had planned. Just in case.

Yesterday, with a signed note from the headmaster himself, she had been permitted to go into Bruxelles – leaving Alma with Kirche, which had been a fair amount of work and took some explaining in the dreams the night before, but the little girl simply wasn't ready for the crowds of the capital. She had made certain purchases there, quite apart from the clothes for Alma which she had handed to her accompanying maid. Siesta had almost seemed ready to protest at having to carry the purchases Louise had made for herself, but acquiesced.

Louise frowned to herself. There was an edge to that servant which she did not quite trust. There was a distinct feeling she got sometimes that the dark-haired maid was laughing at her behind that placid face. But still, she might be a source of information where Alma came from, and furthermore she was useful as maids could be.

And speaking of her… she turned to the maid, who was playing with the little girl. "Siesta, you are excused until after dinner," she told the maid. "You have been doing entirely adequately, and I intend to look after Alma this afternoon."

"You are too kind, my lady," Siesta said, dipping her head. Louise stared at her suspiciously, but could see nothing out of sort about her behaviour. The maid dipped a curtsey in her long skirts, and waved goodbye to Alma, who chattered at her in her foreign language with a blunderbuss scattering of broken Tristainian in it.

As she went, Louise got a proper look at Alma. It had been four days since she had summoned the girl, and she congratulated herself at the good job she had done. Alma was now dressed in properly fitting garments which were suitable for a young noblewoman; long skirts in a pale cream, a deep red jacket laced up the back over the top. Her dark hair was brushed – Louise had grand ambitions that perhaps she could train Alma to brush her own hair in return, and the little girl seemed to find it a peaceful activity just before bed and after waking – and had some of Louise's personal stock of alchemical products on it which made it slightly more sleek and less stringy. That had not been entirely successful; the little girl seemed to have the kind of hair which would never quite be the sleek, bright-coloured coiffure expected of young noble ladies. But still, her red-yellow eyes looked brighter, and even if she still seemed somewhat uncomfortable with the way proper clothes were done, she certainly seemed much happier.

"Loo-ays?" Alma asked, under the older girl's examining stare. "See-easter?"

"Siesta is busy doing work," Louise said, slightly distractedly. "Given we have the afternoon off… um." She reached into the cloth roll she was carrying, and recovered the new wand she had spent a fair amount of her allowance. "Alma, we're going to see if you can work on controlling your magic. Alma magic." She smiled, and held the magical tool out for Alma to take. "Yes?"

The little girl bit down on her lip, and did not move to take it. She was worried, Louise could see; it was written as clear as the afternoon's sun on Alma's normally reserved face.

"It'll be okay," she said, leaning down to squeeze the little girl's hand. "I'm... I'm used to doing things wrong, so it's not like you can do things worse than I normally." Carefully, she guided the little girl's hand onto the wand, and wrapped her fingers around it. "And we can take your chalks and the papers with you, and after we practice a bit, we can find something for you to draw, or maybe see if you can go on the swing."

Alma's face lit up at the mention of the word 'swing', and her fingers tightened around the wand, the thumb-width piece of wood looking bulky in her pale hands. Reaching down, she picked up the satchel Louise had had Siesta obtain for her, in which she carried the chalks and paper than Louise had bought her to allow her to entertain herself in lessons, and patted it. The older girl found some of her pictures somewhat disturbing, to say the least, but it kept Alma quiet during lessons and... and maybe drawing things from the dreams made them less scary or something.

Louise really wished the little girl would use less red and black in her drawings, though.

By the hand she led Alma out of the Academy main buildings, both of them now wearing higher boots and Alma's skirts tied up to the knee, towards the east gate. There was an open field with no animals around which would be a good testing ground, and the rain and general spring dampness would – Louise blushed – mean that hopefully none of the students would be around outside of the walls. Especially not engaging in the activities which, so she had heard, were frequently performed around the field during the summer months.

Ahead of her, she could see Tabitha, carrying a pail in each hand. Louise squinted and saw hints of red in the buckets; no doubt the blue haired girl was feeding her familiar with some kind of meat. They would want to keep away from her when she did that. She didn't want Alma getting scared by the wind dragon familiar. Which was totally unrelated to her own feelings of inadequacy – which she didn't have – which she got when she compared her failure to get a proper familiar to Tabitha's dragon. Which, she hastened to mentally add, was not fair in any way whatsoever.

"Oh, excuse me," said a broad-brimmed hatted figure carrying a wooden tripod, whose path had crossed that of the two girls while Louise was lost in reverie. Paying more attention, Louise realised it was Miss... whatever her name was, the headmaster's secretary and – according to school rumour – his piece of eyecandy and perhaps more. Such suggestions were of course scurrilous and false, Louise had decided, not least because she found it hard to believe that anyone of the headmaster's extremely advanced years could be that interested in that kind of thing. "So, where are you going, Miss de la Valliére and Alma, going?" the secretary asked.

The little girl perked up at the mention of her name, and stared levelly at the green-haired woman, her eyes narrowing fractionally. Louise squeezed her hand tighter and coughed.

"I'm just taking her to look around outside the walls for a bit," the pink-haired girl said, fishing around in a pocket. She displayed the iron token, a red ribbon tied to it. "I have permission," she said.

"Oh, very good," said the secretary. She paused and frowned. "Actually, can you girls do me a favour?" she asked. "The headmaster has me going around and 'getting healthy exercise', because he has grand plans of getting the school to build a new observatory and getting some of those astrologers who have fled the war in Fallen Albion to come here. So I've been looking for various sites with a clear sight of the sky... can you please keep away from the area on the ground marked out in red string and poles? It's a bit away from the walls, you can't miss it. Please don't knock down the poles, especially; I don't want to have to go put them up again."

"Yes, ma'am," Louise replied reflexively, before remembering that she shouldn't address a secretary that way.

The dark-haired girl beside her chattered something in her native language, one hand fiddling with her deep red jacket.

The secretary smiled widely. "She's adorable," she said, stooping down over Alma. "Having to wear a jacket and proper skirts and everything isn't fun, is it? It's so much nicer when they let you go around in a smock and not much else. I bet it itches and it's heavy and stiff."

"She's probably about seven or so," Louise objected. "It's not like she's four. A proper young lady has to learn to dress properly as she will have to in her adult life, at about the age when she learns to write and read."

The older woman raised her eyebrows. "That's rather young," she said, mildly. "But... ah, well. I'm not from the high nobility, am I?" She dug around in a pocket, pulling out a brass tin. "I think I might have a sweet for a little girl," she added, offering a marzipan cube from within to Alma.

Through narrowed eyes, the little girl stared at the sugar-dusted cubes. Carefully, she picked one up, and gave it a sniff.

"It's just marzipan," the green-haired woman said. "Well, marzipan covered in sugar. Rose-flavoured."

Louise sighed. "Remember, she doesn't understand Tristainian," she reminded the older woman. "Only what I've taught her. Alma," she said, directly, "this is marzipan."

"Marshy-pan?"

"Yes, marzipan. It's made of... um... almonds, and... there's sugar in it... it is a sugar-thing. A sweet."

"Marshy-pan is shugar sweet?" Alma considered this for a moment, and popped it in her mouth, before favouring the secretary Miss Longueville with a toothy smile. "Sweet," she said, with a full mouth. "Nice. Marshy-pan is nice."

The older woman smiled indulgently. "They're so cute when this age," she said, shaking her head sadly. "It's really a shame they have to grow up." She paused, and added, "That's not meant as a rudeness to you, Miss de la Valliére. It's just that she's sweeter than you."

Louise glanced down at Alma again, who had her face screwed up as she tried to chew on a slightly-too-large-for-her-mouth chunk of marzipan. "I don't think I can argue with that," the girl said, with a smile.

"Well, anyway," the secretary said. "Remember, please don't go near the roped off area. Otherwise, I hope you have an interesting walk. You might want to take her to see the wind dragon; I think I saw its master headed in that direction, so who knows; maybe if you ask, she'll take little Alma flying."

The pink-haired girl smiled at the older woman. "Maybe," she said, noncommittally. "Come on then, Alma. Say thank you to the lady for the sweet."

"'nk yu," the small child said through a full mouth.

"I taught her that yesterday," Louise said proudly, brushing over the fact that technically speaking, it had been Siesta who had actually drilled that basic vocabulary in. Hand-in-hand, she led the little girl away, and resumed their route towards the east gate of the Academy.


	14. Chapter 14

**The Fearful Void – Part 14**

The two girls made their way out through the gate, heading over fallow fields. The places outside the Academy frequently saw experimentation and magical testing – not least the Springtime Summoning Ritual – and so it was dreadfully hard to persuade farmers to grow crops on land where so much magic had seen use. Not least because there was a non-negligible chance that this year's harvest might be set on ablaze by an experimenting fire mage. As a result, the Academy simply cycled them between growing grazing fodder, and simply lying fallow, and requested that the students and teachers not use the sheep as targets.

Louise had chosen the practicing site well. A fallow field surrounded by four other fallow fields, the landscape was cratered with now water-filled holes from what was probably someone's experimentation with golems. The water was an advantage for this kind of thing, just in case Alma set something on fire, and everything was already in such a state that no one would notice a few more craters.

"Okay, Alma," Louise said, forcing good cheer into her voice. "This is your wand. Your… Alma, where is the wand?"

The little girl looked at her blankly for a moment, before she rummaged around in her bag, and produced it. "Waand," she said, softly.

"Very thoughtful," the older girl said weakly. "I was worried that you dropped it."

"Waand, Loo-ays."

"Yes, Alma, it's your wand." The older girl looked around. "Okay. So. One of the basic, most simple spells is called Holy Light. It's meant to make a clear, unwavering light which shines but doesn't burn, unlike fire, and can even light things up underwater. Variants of this spell are what is worked into magelights, although those variants are anchored by earth magic, and… Alma, what are you doing?"

That last comment was directed at the little girl, who had wandered off at some point, and was squatting by one of the waterlogged craters, poking her wand into it.

"No, Alma," Louise said, moving to stand by her. Gently, she pulled her upright. "Look, watch me. I want you to copy. Do what I do. Um…" she thought, trying to remember the words Alma knew. "Copy? Do this? Alma do what Louise do? Imitate… okay, you won't know that word. Do what Louise does."

Drawing her own wand, Louise pointed down at the water. "Holy Light," she said clearly and firmly, being careful to enunciate the phrases correctly.

A dull, eye-aching red light began to suffuse the entire body of water, like the sun shining through closed eyelids. Steam began to waft from the surface, thick white clouds boiling and writhing, but despite that seeming heat ice crystals cracked and propagated across the surface.

Louise released her will, and let out a breath, ignoring the slight ache behind her brow. "That's how you do it," she said. "Well… that's not exactly how you do it… I can't make the white light that most people normally do, but that's something that takes everything practice. The white is hard to do… most people end up making light that looks like their elemental affinity on their first tries. So I'll be able to do better some day!" She felt tiny arms around her, and felt Alma pressing her face into her stomach as the little girl clung to her, whispering something into her torso.

"No, no, it's not dangerous or anything," Louise said quickly. "Even I haven't managed to muck it up and hurt someone… well, I managed to burn my fingers once, but that was my fault for sticking my hands in the water when it was glowing. And it doesn't always even burn me. So that's fine. And… Alma? Your go. Alma do what Louise do."

Carefully, she unfolded the girl's embrace, and got behind her. Putting her hands over the girl's, she moved the small child's arms so they were in the right positions. "Say after me," she said. "Holy Light. Holy Light. Holy Light."

Alma screwed her face up, and locked her lips.

"Come on," Louise chided her. "There's nothing to be scared of. Just do it, and it can help with control." She slumped. "Or maybe I'm just not good enough to teach this kind of thing," she whispered to herself. "Maybe you're right to not want to learn from me, because I can't even do the spell right in the first place."

Beneath her, the little girl shifted.

"Haley lie?" Alma tried. "Haley lie."

Something certainly happened. Louise was sure of that later. She was sure because there was a flash of light, so bright it ceased to have colour and became some kind of invasive presence behind the eyeballs.

"Oww," Louise said, after a moment's thought. She felt very strange. Sort of horizontal. She looked up, and Alma was kneeling over her, lips thin, hands wringing together. "That was… okay," she said, after a moment.

The chatter of words from Alma's mouth was so fast and clearly apologetic that Louise got her meaning completely. That half-locked, shoulder-raised position she was in too, as if she was scared that Louise would be angry for doing that was also very clear.

"I'm not _angry_," Louise said, forcing herself to smile, even if all she wanted to do was lie down in a dark room with something to put over her eyes. "I told you to do it, didn't I? I wouldn't be doing my job as a teacher if I got angry at you for doing something I told you to." She pulled herself up onto her elbows.

Alma sat back on her haunches, confusion flickering momentarily over her expression. "Loo-ays?" she finished it with.

"Well, if it comes down to it, you can always blind someone if they're threatening you," Louise said, for lack of anything else to say. She pulled herself to her feet, noting that once again she had managed to get mud over herself, which would mean another trip to the baths and more washing for herse… for Siesta. She glance over at the pool of water. There was a thin slush of shattered ice floating in it, and about half the water was gone.

The puddle shook. Again. And again. Confused, Alma looked around, and let out a squeak at the sight of a giant greyish _thing _stalking towards her on its two clawed legs. The creature was sleek and predatory, its long flight feathers brushed back and its mouth was some strange hybrid of a beak and a maw, combining sharp teeth with a hardened jawline which bought the mind towards thoughts of crushing bones. It slowed to a walk, sinking slightly in the wet ground, and then stopped, tilting its head as its two green eyes locked on the little girl.

Alma whispered something to herself.

The beast let out a surprisingly melodious and high-pitched whistle, at a deafening volume which had both the little girl and her pink-haired guardian clasping their hands over their ears.

"Tabitha!" Louise yelled, once she had taken her hands away from her ears. "Your _dragon's _loose!"

The dragon - for that was what it was - strutted back and forth, looking at the two girls through one eye then the other. It spread its two wings wide, complete with hand-like claw-appendages at the end, and beat down. The wet grass rippled under the pressure, and it whistled again, a chatter of descending notes. And then it spoke. "Hello!" it said, in a strange, breathy whistle-voice. "Hello!"

The dark-haired little girl said something in an awed tone of voice. Louise would bet a large amount of money that it was something along the lines of 'It's talking!' Taking a step forwards, Alma wide-eyed said, "Hallow!" back.

"Oh, no," Louise said, shaking her head. "Dragons aren't actually intelligent, not really. They're just mimics. They can actually be very dangerous, you know; the ones which live in the woods have learned to copy human shouts for help and lure people off the path." She shrugged. "Mind you, they also eat orcs, so I suppose there's always some good."

The dragon seemed to lock eyes with her, and Louise took a step back from that ball-sized emerald eye. "Hello!" it said again, before it twisted, and with its toothed maw-beak plucked a stray arm-length feather from its colossal wings.

"Hallow!" Alma replied, taking another step closer.

"Um," Louise began, not wishing to interrupt the quality repartee occurring in front of her, but somewhat concerned for the little girl. "Alma… I don't think…" She trailed away, though, as the dragon dropped its spare feather in front of Alma, and the little girl stooped to pick up the blue-grey thing. It was almost as tall as she was, and looked rather more like some kind of fan.

The dragon chirruped at the expression of awe on the little girl's face, and licked her with a rough tongue, from knees to hairline. It released a rising and falling sequence of whistles which sounded remarkably like laughter, and turned tail, even as Alma stared blankly, patting at her now-drenched face and clothes with her free hand in a vaguely shocked manner.

"I bet Tabitha taught it to do that," Louise said, hand on hip. "Never trust a dragon, unless it's been raised from hatching to be ridden by a dragoon. They're just wild animals, really."

"Want baath," Alma said, turning up towards Louise. Despite the wobbling lip, she didn't let go of the feather. "Wet." She made a disgusted noise, and screwed up her face, glaring at the retreating back of the dragon. "Wet! Want baath!" Screwing her fists up, the little girl screamed in frustration and anger. Hyperventilating, her eyes flicked from left to right, as if she was tracking unseen flies in her vision.

"Alma," Louise began. "Breathe! Calm down!" She made her own annoyed noise, as she realised that none of the known words would help with this, and – breathing rapidly herself – tried to think what on earth she should do. What should she do? She didn't have any ice, or any… did she have the smelling salts with her. Frantically she began to pat her pockets.

A coronal heat-haze erupted into life around Alma, shot through with red flickers and shadowy afterimages. Around her, in an expanding circle, the grass bent and died, rotting where it had fallen. And then it ignited, a flash-fire flickering in uncomfortable heat on the floor around the two girls. The giant feather Alma held detonated, born away in whispering shadows which sussurated and spiralled up in a funereal pyre.

"Alma!" Louise shouted. "Please!" For a lack of other options, she half-embraced, half-tackled the dark-haired girl. She was hugging her, but she was also trying to block the sight of the dragon which was so infuriating Alma from her. Maybe if she wasn't staring at it, she could calm down.

The answer came as, Louise on top of her, the small girl began to convulse. Kicking, thrashing, she flailed blindly at the older girl, a flash of white-hot pain on Louise's cheek marking a scratch. The pink-haired girl knew from experience to keep away from the teeth of someone in this state, and pinned down the little girl's hands. It was a small mercy that the younger girl was someone who she could actually outweigh and overpower.

"It's going to be all right," Louise repeated over and over again, over the spitting and screaming and shouting in that strange language. "It's horrible and you're going to have a horrible headache and feel sick and everything when this passes and it hurts!" If she was like her and Cattleya, it was likely that Alma wasn't even seeing Louise at the moment, not behind the red and the screaming and the pain. "It's going to be all right," she repeated. "Alma, it's Louise. It's going to be all right."

She wasn't sure how long she had been there, but eventually the thrashing stopped. Carefully peeling back one eyelid, Louise checked the fully dilated pupils, and noted the lack of reaction. That was her out cold. She was going to feel _rotten _when she woke up. The older girl straightened up, wincing at the bruises she could feel and the pain from the scratches. Rolling her neck, she looked around.

And met a blue-eyed gaze.

"What?" she demanded of Tabitha.

"Nothing," the blue-haired girl said, quietly.

"Then go away," Louise snapped, almost on the edge of crying in frustration. "It… it was your… your Void-damned dragon and…" she trailed off, screwing her eyes shut and focussing on her breathing as the red haze descended and the whispering started. In and out, in and out, think of nothing else. "It was," she grated each individual word out, "your dragon. Who set this off. Just… go."

When she opened her eyes, Tabitha was gone. And that was just for the best. Louise lay down on the wet grass, and began to cry.

Founder, she couldn't deal with this. She just… oh, Cattleya. She couldn't handle looking after another sick little girl with the same sort of thing as her who couldn't even speak the same language and was completely untrained in magic or self-control. She couldn't _deal _with it. Not like this, when she was bruised and battered and scratched from holding a little girl down until the child passed out from the pain, and when she had a splitting headache and had almost had a little incident herself. She was filthy and wet and wanted a bath and… Founder damn it all. Just a few days until Mother arrived. She had to hold herself together, and not disappoint her mother, even if she wanted Mother so badly. At least she would _know _what to do.


	15. Chapter 15

**The Fearful Void – Part 15**

"… and Brimir spoke to Imaken, saying 'Take heart, for the Lord watches all and the Lord knows all. Men need smiths as much as they do soldiers, and against the plague of elvenkind and their monsters iron is our best friend. Fire up the forge, and be ready for the hour and the day.' The Founder laid his hands on Imaken, and he regained his blinded sight, and took up his hammer once more, and began to forge the chariot that Brimir asked of him."

Hair still damp, having barely had time to change and bathe, Louise sat, hands clasped together on her lap. The cushioning in the pews was not enough to mitigate the chill in the chapel, and her legs were shaking slightly from the cool draft which was somehow managing to worm up underneath her skirts. She was normally very attentive at chapel, especially for the Fireday prayers, but her mind was ill at ease, and she could not focus.

Her eyes drifted up to the ceiling, the great frescos peeling slightly from age. Here the Founder led his followers through harsh dry lands accompanied by angels, there he granted the cowl of righteousness to the first pope and left him a fraction of his God-given gifts, there he stood with Mercy, Grace and Vengeance – said in folk tales to be the mothers of his heirs and the first royals, though official doctrine denied that they had been anything other than normal women made holy by his favour.

Her gaze wandered down the marble curve of the dome, to the vast stained-glass window behind the chaplain. The setting sun illuminated it in bloody red, but that had always been the intent of the masterpiece, and it was why the chapel was west-facing. It portrayed the Martyrdom of the Founder. A faceless – doctrinally faceless, for the one who had done such an act was damned in the most terrible way – figure of clear glass drove a sword into the blessed Founder, through his armour and crimson robes. Despite this terrible act, though, the man, or at least his glazed facsimile, smiled benevolently, staring down upon the students in the chapel with a serene expression. Despite the red light which suffused the rest of the image, his face was kindly and untainted, as if it lit by the midday sun. The window was almost three hundred years old, and it was widely agreed to be a masterpiece – the final work of the famed fire mage Joseph de la Rochelle.

As it always did, Louise took comfort from the sacred figure. One hand went to the gladiform necklace she wore under her clothes, and she took a steadying breath. Her faith and her mother's rule of steel were her anchor and shield respectively, and even though she knew that she could sometimes disappoint her mother, she would never, ever fail the Lord, whose kindness and grace forgave all sins and pledged that in perfection all would be made better. She tried to focus again on the sermon by the chaplain; she had all the rest of the week to think, but only in chapel was it quiet and peaceful and holy.

And God knew – and he did – that she needed quiet, peace and holiness right now.

"Taking up the reigns of his new chariot, Brimir turned his eyes to the heavens. 'Swift and powerful this must be,' he said, 'and yet none must know of our coming. The shields of our foes will be raised and their weapons will be readied if they knew we were coming for them.' Having said that, he took a rope from the forge of Imaken, and went to a nearby wood, and there he caught two hinds, and put harness upon them and had the hinds bear him to battle. 'Go forth,' he told his followers, 'and seek out hinds for yourself, and ride them for they are swift and nimble across rough ground and the beat of their hooves will not be recognised when they look for us.'" The chaplain cleared his throat. "Be aware, therefore," the grey-haired man, "of the difference between deceiving a foe and lying to an ally. Look to the example of the Founder, who never once told a lie to his followers or his friends, and yet had the very mind of god on his side and so had many and cunning deceptions which he bought against those who would enslave the hearts and minds of men. And the next passage reinforces this lesson…"

Louise could not help but let her mind wander again. She was all too familiar with this part of the Novateuch, and she felt slightly guilty about feeling not that interested about the victories of the Founder over various enemies. Yes, there had been many dangers, as cruel monsters – elves but one of the threats – had attempted to kill the faithful, but… it was less important nowadays. Compared to the promise of faith repaid, the love and grace of the Lord, it was a bit… Louise did not think the word 'tawdry', but it adequately summarised the well of feelings that she did not dare to think.

She needed to show Alma the way of the faithful. That much was certain and clear to her. The Lord promised an end to pain, a surcease from suffering and discomfort. The little girl needed that, deserved that. Louise knew she only had partial knowledge of the suffering in her life, but what she knew was enough already. One simply should _not _be scared of one's father in that manner, and Alma's mother was dead. That was even before she got into the bruises, the expectation that the girl be… be beaten or something, the complete lack of tuition in the magical arts… and the way she was ill in the same way Louise was ill. Possibly even in the same way Cattleya was ill, though she would have expected to see more fits in the time she had known Alma if it was as severe as her older sister's condition.

It was all part of the wisdom of God, that some people suffer. The pink-haired girl just wished sometimes that the Lord's plan was a little less ineffable and involved less suffering. But this was, as taught by the Church, the best of all possible worlds. The girl took heart from that, for that meant that her life could not but be worse in other could-bes. Alma would do well to be taught that too, because it made the headaches and the fainting easier to handle.

Sadly, Louise shook her head, and clasped her hands tighter. She had taken Alma to the infirmary, who knew how to handle such things, and had – to be extra sure – also found Siesta and told her to be there for Alma when she woke up. She hoped that it would not be until chapel had ended, because she wanted to be there for the little girl.

"Please rise," she heard the chaplain say, and automatically got to her feet. Folding her hands behind her back, she closed her eyes, and slowly let out a breath. "Our Lord," she began, lips moving in long-memorised rote along with everyone else in the room, "who art all things, who is here with us in the strength of the earth, the warmth of the fire, the sanctity of the waters and the breath of the air, and in the heavens above, the Founder, who filled the earth and skies with life, in the name of Brimir, Saint and Prophet and Martyr who s-saved us from all evils, we beseech you, hear this prayer of these faithful children of the Church."

"We thank you for the justice of the Queen, and pray for her health and wisdom," said the chaplain.

"Long may she reign."

"For learning and knowledge, for the lessons we learn here, for our teaching and for those who laid the path for us, we thank you."

"Lord, we thank you."

"For our parents, and the many gifts they have given us, for their patience and their strength, we thank you."

"Lord, we thank you."

"For good harvests and good crops, for safety from disease, for sanctity and cleanliness and good fortune, we thank you."

"Lord, we thank you."

"Fire, Water, Wind and Earth united, hear our prayer, oh Lord. Founder Brimir, who forgave the world for the fell deed of his murder, let Void bind and bring these things together."

"Fire, Water, Wind and Earth. Let Void bind all," Louise whispered, to the background sound of a hundred other voices. "Please, Lord, let Alma be better and bless her and ease her path. Please let your grace protect her, and let her know no more suffering in her life."

The pink-haired girl's knuckled whitened as she squeezed her hands together.

"Please," she begged the heavens.


	16. Chapter 16

**The Fearful Void – Part 16**

The burner hissed as the leather-swaddled commoners shovelled more coal into the furnace. The howl of the wind was a constant background noise, as the windman at the stern cut the path through the air currents for the gas bag and the vessel hanging below it.

The Duchess de la Valliére stalked up and down along the deck. Limping slightly, her boots clicked against the wood with an alternating pattern of noise. A bubble of clean air followed her at all times, even when she strode through the trailing smoke.

Founder, she couldn't stand civilian windships. Their speed – still faster than a horse – crept against her nerves. She was far too used to proper military ships, ones which used the increasingly rare magical windstones dug from near-depleted mines or found in ruins, which flew like a bird rather than be held up by smoky heaters. And she had encountered very few windmen who she didn't want to seize control from and do it properly.

Yes, that was probably the most aggravating aspect of transport on a single-manned ship, the duchess considered. The ineptitude of these people who devoted their lives to this role and yet were simply so bad at it. She could feel the pocket of turbulence ahead and any fool could see the cloud patterns up above would leave a ripple of stable vortices for the next few miles. But was the windman – who was actually a woman – adjusting for it? No, of course she wasn't.

Karin, Duchess de la Valliére, thrust her hands deeper into her fur robes, and sighed, turning for another circuit of the deck. And she was going into an unknown situation with insufficient information. That worried her too. It made her… well, it made her antsy. She wanted to be in her armour. It was proper armour, too, in the greys and blues of the knights of former eras; thick and made from the finest materials, with a sealed helm. Not the damnable cuirasses and open helms of the modern era. Though even one of them would be better than the robes she had to wear, given she was retired.

The woman with the pinned-back pink hair realised she was gripping the railing tightly, and let go with an annoyed twist, favouring her right leg. Lord, it was just a sign of how ill at ease she was feeling that her mind was wandering as it was. Even the fact she had a mild headache was not keeping her mind on the world around her, and those normally made her tend to hyperfocus.

But she worried about her daughter.

There, she had thought it.

Oh, she worried about all her daughters. Cattleya, of course, was a constant concern; forced to spend most of her time in the well-lit, ventilated, and above all easily repairable attics of the wing they had adapted for her. Karin knew in her heart of hearts that she would almost certainly outlive her, and that was a terrible thing for an old warhorse like herself to know. And Eleanore was a more subtle worry. Her eldest was too clever for her own good, too abrasive for a good marriage, and Karin knew the natural philosopher-mages of Amstreldamme of old. She was not happy at all with Eleanore's involvement with them, nor how she had taken up their practices like a duck to water.

But Louise. Oh, Louise. So like her in some ways. The same drive, the same ability to obsess, the same streak of perfectionism – the same slight brittleness, at least if she trusted her husband in that. Which was ridiculous; she wasn't brittle at all.

But in the places where they were different, Louise came up worse. It was shameful as a mother, but it was true. Louise was not fast or strong; Karin had got in scraps all the time at her age – and had won more than she had lost – while her daughter tried to avoid physical violence. Louise was sicker than her, and her sickness manifested in more debilitating ways. She had feared that her youngest daughter might be as sickly as her big sister when the first fits and fainting spells had started, but they had been mercifully mild enough that the girl had been able to attend school.

And that was where the real problem was. Her daughter had simply no talent for magic. She could cast the spells – it wasn't as if she had mothered an inexprimé – but she seemed completely unable to progress past that first initial clumsy stage of a normal child. Her attempts at a basic light spell burned and froze and the light it cast was a bloody red at best. When she tried a fireball, things shattered or exploded. It was certainly not a lack of power, not the state of affairs of the lesser mages of the trading houses who no matter how hard they tried could never really exceed dot-class effects. There was something wrong – and that was the shameful phrase again – with how her daughter did things which was not her fault for lack of effort.

It had taken Karin a long time to settle on her sinking, creeping depressed feeling that the problem was likely related to her own sickness, to the flaw – the weakness and imperfection – that she had passed down to her daughters. Cattleya often went into convulsions when she tried to use magic and Louise had power, but no control. They had lost children, too; bloodied scraps of flesh gasping through undeveloped lungs, perfectly formed yet cold and blue babies, and her… her darling boy taken from her too soon by God

Sometimes, when she felt less self-recriminatory, Karin wondered if maybe there was such a thing as 'too much power' in a bloodline. She and her husband were both square-class mages, and such a marriage was rare indeed. And there had been those hints and warnings against it from those in the know – though in truth, she still rather felt that those warnings had been rather more focussed on the dangers that such a power block of two square-class mages unified in marriage could pose to the interests of others rather than any effect it might have had on their children. The de la Valliére family, with its links to the royal family and its excellent noble heritage produced powerful mages, but there was little madness and sickness in it… not compared to the Gallian royal family, say, or the de la Poe lineage in western Albion.

But when she was honest with herself, it was likely due to her own flaws. Just enough flaw that she had always had to fight to prove herself, fight against things that other people had taken for granted, and turn her weaknesses into areas that she had to focus on. Steel was made strong and hard and flexible by its flaws and impurities, superior to pure iron. But too much flaw, and the steel was useless.

Maybe bloodlines were like steel too. How appropriate for a woman who they had said had metal in her veins. So Louise had to learn to be strong. She had to fight her own flaws, fight her sickness, hammer herself into strength just as her mother had at her own age. Karin knew her daughter could do it, was _sure _the girl had it in in her in a way that Cattleya would never be able to be strong enough.

But Louise was too brittle, too fragile, still unable to channel the talent and skill that she showed clear flickers of. It broke her mother's heart secretly.

Hunting dogs were like that; the best killers were never the purebloods. No, they were those among the first generation mongrels who got the best traits of both lineages. But she did not want to think of her daughters – her daughters who had nursed from her, who had grown in front of her, who had sickened and collapsed and convulsed from things wrong with them that the healers could not fix – she did not want to think them as useless mongrels.

And now Louise wrote to her, speaking of abnormalities in her summoning ritual, of a little girl called and yet not bound who showed signs of the same sickness and who spoke no known language. She had to be there. She had to be there to protect her family, to protect her husband and her children from rumour. She had to be there for her daughter, her precious, flawed daughter who had pinned all her hopes on this summoning and her capacity to manage one spell properly, and be there to make the arrangement if she had truly failed at it. And she had to be there to investigate, because as far as she was aware, this sort of thing _did not happen_.

Knuckles white around the rail of the ship, the duchess exhaled into the chill air, staring down through the evening's light. She recognised the rivers below, lit in red by the setting sun, and that meant they were nearly there. The windship itself was headed for Bruxelles, but it was a matter of triviality for her to get off here. It was a shame that her manticore was left behind; the beast simply lacked stamina for long journeys. She would need to make her own way from where she landed.

One quarter of an hour later, the Duchess de la Valliére threw herself off the side of the ship, and within thirty minutes of that she was stalking up the road to the Academy of Magic, as the sun set behind her.


	17. Chapter 17

**The Fearful Void – Part 17**

Panting slightly, Louise got to the top of the flight of stairs, her calves aching. The climb to the top of the tallest and oldest tower in the Academy was no mild undertaking. It was certainly good for her legs, though. And in truth, she loved it up here. It was quiet, and she could see for kilometres around. Marshes glittered in the sunlight to the north leading to the Great North Sea, while in the west were the extensive royal oak forests which existed for Tristain's navy. Up here, surrounded by the air, the voices of the world below distant indistinct whispers, it was almost as if she was flying.

Behind her, Alma pulled herself up the bannisters, and collapsed down into a boneless heap on the ground, face down. The muttering in her native language was incomprehensible, but from the tone of voice it did not sound pleased. The wheezing Siesta emitted as she similarly slumped down on the ancient concrete of the tower conveyed the same unhappiness.

"Oh, come on," the pink-haired girl said, barely paying attention to the other two as she stared out through the glass windows, already heading out onto the balcony for the final climb to the top of the tower. "It's not that bad."

"… I… I thought you were meant to be sickly and in ill-health. My lady," Siesta wheezed. "I… I would not think that you could m-make this… this climb. I don't even know why you need… needed me."

Louise raised an eyebrow. "It's not so much higher than other things," she said, with a half-shrug. "It's only a bit taller than some of the towers at home, or in the capital. And you're a maid, right? You should be used to running up and down stairs all day." Whatever response Siesta would have produced was lost in another wave of coughing, as Louise continued, "I try to come up here at least once a week. No one else does, and… um, well, I got into the habit of climbing towers when I was little because my oldest sister told me that if I climbed tall things I'd get taller." The pink-haired girl glowered. "She was lying."

"… really, my lady?" the maid managed, picking herself up from the ground and slowly helping Alma to collapse down into the padded seats which were by the top of the stairs. Red-faced, she stared at her shoes, not meeting the eyes of the noble girl. "Please… you can go… go look out over things. I… I think… think I'll just stay here with… with Alma and help her get her breath back."

"Suit yourself," Louise said, shrugging again. "But you're missing out. It's really beautiful, the view."

"I hope you enjoy it," Siesta said, in another one of those comments which she seemed to produce which bordered on the insolent. Louise was feeling magnanimous, though, and decided to not push it; after all, the maid did look rather tired from the climb and the clothes that the staff wore looked rather thicker than the light gown she was wearing. Plus, she would enjoy it.

Louise stepped out through the doorway, outside into the chill evening air. Entwining her hands in the plants which ensnared the building, she took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of ivy and old familiar stone, along with a hint of cooked food and smoke from the kitchens far below. And she began to climb again, working her way up the stairs which wrapped around the peak of the tower, up to the final gantry made of old verdigris copper. Only the lightning conductor reached higher than this platform, and though every year a few students levitated up to it, for most this was quite high enough already.

Surprisingly, there was someone else up there. "Oh," Louise said, catching the eye of the headmaster's secretary. "Hello." Thinking back… yes, the other woman had been up here a few times over her time at the school. "Good evening."

The other woman's eyebrows rose. "Oh, Mademoiselle de la Valliére. What are you doing up here?" She paused for a moment. "Do you have some kind of project for the astrology teachers or something? The sun still hasn't set."

Louise shook her head. "Oh, no, no." She snorted in a rather unladylike manner. "For one, they never set homework." Internally she winced, because this was the headmaster's secretary and she would not be popular if it turned out she was responsible for this fortunate state of affairs coming to light. "I'm just coming up here to see the sunset and… well, I wanted to show the view to Alma, but she's collapsed down in the seats with the maid, which _is _somewhat annoying, but I suppose she has short legs and so the climb is more tiring for her."

From the way Miss Longueville glanced down at Louise in a decidedly footwards direction, the schoolgirl was sure that the older woman was thinking some comment about Louise's own height. Hastily she changed the subject. "It is a lovely view, isn't it?"

"Oh yes." The older woman stared out over the landscape, over towards the farm fields to the south. "I was always up and down tall things when I was a girl, and of course, I grew up in the hills so… honestly, me, I've always found this area of the country a little too flat. I'm sure it's good for the farmers, but I'm not a farmer."

Louise smiled politely, and turned out, leaning into the wind. Her light gown, chosen so she would be comfortable when climbing the near-endless stairs to the top, was not proof against the breeze, but she ignored it. Hair rippling behind her, she held on tight and closed her eyes. Here, it was so easy to imagine she was actually flying, that the wind rippling through her hair was laden with clouds and she was standing on… on some kind of palanquin on the back of the largest dragon ever. Even the way the tower swayed all so slightly in the changing breeze helped with the illusion.

"Mademoiselle," the secretary began hesitantly, from somewhere behind her, breaking the illusion, "are you feeling quite all right? Concerned about… about the summoning? And your future?"

Teeth locking for a moment, the girl supressed the urge to snap at the older woman for breaking the imagining. She didn't want to be judged for that… and also being too rude to the headmaster's secretary was the sort of thing which had long term consequences. "I'm fine," she said. "I'm a mage, we all know that. Inexprimé don't break things like I do. So what if I can't get any spells to work; I can learn. And the Headmaster has said that there will be no attempts to get me to leave and I have a marriage arranged, so everything is just… fine."

"If you feel you are having problems…" the older woman began.

"I said I'm fine," Louise said, raising her voice slightly as she turned to glare at the green-haired woman. She paused, and took a deep breath, trying to ignore the slight pulse behind her temples. "I'm just a little short on sleep because of… bad dreams, and… and Alma has been unwell and that had been stressful. I am sorry," she added, "but I came up here to have some peace and quiet, away from the rest of the school." The pounding was getting worse, and she stepped back to close her eyes and focus on her breathing.

Maybe the secretary would get the hint, and cease her yattering, she thought, massaging her temples. She completely missed the sigh of relief from Miss Longueville at the way that the somewhat unstable, stressed-about-her-future, friends-lacking scion of the de la Valliéres stopped leaning over the railings of the high place. The sound of her breathing merged with the sound of the wind in her head, and the growing headache faded.

This always happened! People shouldn't be allowed to interrupt her when she was in a private place, up high, safe and quiet and… and able to feel like she was flying. When she was trying to be calm and quiet, of _course _people being annoying and disturbing her made her more susceptible to having headaches and even – if pushed too far – a little incident.

Opening her eyes again, she sighed, and stared out towards the west. The sun inched down towards the horizon, painting the world red. Much like her magic often did, really. And there was also the same mix of warmth upon her face and chill, of light and darkness. And this was beautiful at least; beautiful in a way that no one criticised or blamed or mocked her for. From this height, she felt almost like she could reach out and seize the sun in her hands.

Louise sighed happily. And then paused, as she focussed on a tiny figure making its way towards the gates, limping in an all too familiar way. "Oh. Oh my," Louise said, slowly. Cast in the light of the setting sun, the ruddy sky concealed that she was even paler than usual. "Oh dear. I… excuse me, I've… I've just remembered something. I need to dash."

She should have seen this happen, should have known it would occur. Of course her mother would get there faster than she expected. She should have expected that. It always happened. The woman pushed herself hard and she always went beyond what any sane person would have done. Louise could not even imagine what she had done to get here; taken a horse relay, perhaps, or made a near-hurricane to get a passing boat to its destination with tattered sails and a mast barely rooted in the ship.

She took the stairs down from the top two at a time, leaving the headmaster's secretary alone again at the top of the tower. "We have to go!" she announced to the seated girls. "Right now! We need to get down! My mother is here and she's going to want to see us and if we're not there she will have words to say and I really, really, really want Alma to make a good impression on her because…" she bit back what she was about to say. "Because it's important," she finished, weakly.

Siesta glared at her – there was no other word for that insubordinate stare. "We only just got up here," she protested.

"And now we're going all the way down again," Louise said heartlessly. "Stairs do that. They go up, but they also go down, and when my mother is here that means they're certainly going down. Come on, Alma," she said, striding over to where the little girl was seated. The dark-haired child was still slightly flushed, but seemed to be in somewhat better state. "My mother is here. Mother. Mama. Go down the stairs," she pointed, "to meet Mother."

The response from the little girl was almost certainly a complaint, and the elongation of one of the words suggested that specific word meant "tired".

Louise squatted down beside her, taking both hands. "This is important, Alma," she said, seriously. "We need to see my mother, because all sorts of things might happen, and we need to impress her. And she… she'll want to see you." Letting go, she dug a hand into a pocket, and produced the wax-sealed honeycomb which she had bought up here for… well, she had been going to at least _share _it with the little girl. "You can have this if you come down," she said, ignoring the muttered phrase which sounded rather like 'bribery' from Siesta.

Alma glared at the honeycomb, chewing on her lip. Her hands shot out to snatch it, and she slid off the seat, every square centimetre of her body miming weariness and exhaustion.

"Good girl," Louise said cheerfully. "And because you can't understand what I'm saying, as long as I keep smiling you won't get what I mean when I say that if you keep that up you'll have a good future as an actor." She turned, and began her way down the stairs. "Come on," she said, turning to face a little girl who was no longer there.

"Um," said Louise, boggling.

There was a spluttering noise from Siesta. "She was just here," the maid said, choking. "Alma? Alma! Alma?"

The noble girl whirled, trying to see where she might have gone. Had she gone out to the stairs? Did she want to see the view. A pale – and sulky – face caught her attention. It was attached to a body, which was standing, honeycomb in hand, on the landing below. "That was fast," Louise said weakly, her mouth working on autopilot.

Alma pouted, and bit into the wax covering of the honeycomb viciously. "Loo-ays," she stated, her voice an oddly penetrating husky whisper. "Down. Loo-ays slow."

The older girl's mouth twitched downwards. "Okay, okay, clearly you weren't so tired," she said. "Very good job at getting my honeycomb." She made her way down to the landing, approaching Alma… who was suddenly not there any more, but was instead down on the next landing down.

It was moving, but it was strangely stuttered, Louise considered afterwards when she had had time to think. Perhaps it was so fast that the eye could only track it so much. Perhaps she really did flicker from place to place, like a series of frames from a kinephotographist's show. Either way…

"… my mother is going to want to see this," the noble girl whispered. "Okay, Alma. You get to keep the honeycomb. Now we need to hurry. We need to… yes, we'll go straight to the headmaster, because she'll expect a room prepared and we need it done fast and he'll want to know and… oh, I'm coming, I'm coming, I need to hurry!"

Louise pushed aching thighs and calves into motion, and took the stairs as fast as she could, clogs clattering against the ancient metal.

* * *

…

* * *

Groaning, Siesta stared down the stairwell, and gagged, staggering backwards. She took several deep, shaking breaths and inched her way over to the stairs, only to flinch back again when she looked down. She paced back and towards, trying not to look towards the windows or down the stairs. Finally, she managed to ease herself down onto the first step.

"I really, really, really, really, really hate heights," she whispered to herself. "I hate them. Hate them. Hate hate hate." Each 'hate' was accompanied by her slowly lowering herself down onto the next stair, clinging onto the railing with both hands. "So much hate. Some of us can't do blurry-movey things or be tiny short noble brats who have a head for heights. Hate heights. Hate hate hate."

She paused in her monologue at the first landing, while she gasped for breath.

"So much hate. Just leave me up here, don't you? It wasn't so bad climbing up, because I could look at the wall. Now I have to go down. Hate. So much hate… argh, no, don't look down the gap at the centre. So much hate."

The voices of the other two girls echoed up from beneath, and she shuddered.


	18. Chapter 18

**The Fearful Void - Part 18**

The whirring, ticking form of the headmaster's clock counted away the seconds in his private dining room. The place, with its lush red carpet and dark wooden walls was reserved for him and his personal guests. Most commonly, as now, they were parents of students. The place smelt of pipe tobacco, a hint of spirits, and honestly, 'old person'.

Louise felt very small in this room. She had only been here a few times before, and most of them had been after talks about how she needed to try harder at not destroying school facilities and other things of that ilk. As it was, she was tired after playing catch-up with Alma down all the stairs on the tower and her desperate sprint up to the headmaster's office to inform him that her mother was here. It was just as well that she was seated, because her legs had been wobbling from fatigue.

She glanced across the table at Alma, who was seated on two cushions and thus was visible above the edge of the table. The little girl looked disgustingly not-exhausted, and was staring at the ornate set of cutlery before her with eyes which seemed to mix puzzlement and anticipation.

The dark-haired girl probably just wanted food.

To her right, at the head of the table was Headmaster Osmond. The old man looked half-asleep, and that was not entirely surprising, because he had been all-the-way asleep at his desk when Louise had burst through the door. Still, at least he had ordered the guest rooms aired and prepared, and that was good, because her mother would not be... _sharp _about those things.

And speaking of the Duchess Karina de la Valliére... Louise turned to look at her mother. She had not been avoiding her stare, of course, she had just... been avoiding her stare.

The older woman tilted her head at her daughter, and said nothing.

"M-mother," Louise began. "I requested that..."

"Moofer?" Alma asked, pointing at the duchess.

Louise winced, and bit her lip. The hot tastes of iron indicated that she was not bleeding. No, no, no, didn't Alma get _context _and how the learning-words game might be appropriate for the normal dining room, but not this one? No, of course she didn't. "Yes, Alma," she said. "This is my mother. Mother. Her name is Karina, and she is Louise's mother." She licked her lips, trying not to wince from the pain of the bitten lip, and waited to see what the response was.

Alma's, at least, was reassuring. "Karina. Moofer of Loo-ays." She nodded once, and went back to staring at the cutlery.

Her mother's was... perplexing. At least her eyes had not narrowed. Though at the moment Louise was feeling so nervous about everything which was to come that she was not sure that she would be able to even manage a single mouthful without throwing up. "Is she simple?" the duchess asked tersely.

"N-no," Louise protested. "Mother, I... I explained it in the letter. She j-just doesn't speak any... well, any known language at all. They... they tested her on all of them. N-none of the language teachers could understand her, n-not even Professor Bangain, who sp-speaks Desh." She paused. "Well, he can read it at least, and sh-she can read and write, and she couldn't read his writing." She paused, sucking on her bitten lip. "She's actually picked up a lot from my... the teaching," she added weakly. "It's not that she's simple, it's... um... it's only been a week."

"Hmm." Long fingers tapped on the table. "And what have you gathered about her origins? What personal possessions did she have?"

Louise swallowed. "She... she was wearing a dress-like thing made of something l-like waxed paper. And she had this..." the girl waved her hands in the air, trying to describe it, "... this m-mesh cowl on her head, like..."

"Armour?"

"No, Mother. Professor Colbert gave it to the headmaster, I think."

The old man lurched upright. "Mmm?" he asked, responding to the mention of his title. "Oh, yes, yes. Got it in one of my cabinets," he added, head tilting forwards again.

"Would you mind showing me it?" Louise's mother asked, each syllable clipped.

Putting his unlit pipe between his lips, the man nodded, and pulled himself to his feet. "They should be bringing the soup," he said, slowly. "It... mmm... should be fairly spicy. And if it isn't, please tell them to leave the ginger and the chilli seeds so I can add my own. They don't like me doing it, you know." The old man shuffled his way through across the lavish carpet, and closed the door behind him.

"My," Karin said after a moment's thought. "He seems to be getting worse."

Louise coughed. "I... um... well, he wasn't quite this..." she paused, looking for words, before settling on, "old, the last time I met with him. I think he... he may be tired. Or hungry."

"It is possible, of course," the older woman said. "Little girl, put down that knife," she added to Alma, without even looking at her. "You will only hurt yourself. It might be a good idea to disarm her of all the knives intended for meat, fish and the like, daughter."

Louise spared a glance at the small child, and winced at the way she was testing what looked to be one of the fish knives against her finger tip. "Alma!" she cried out, gesturing frantically towards the table. "Put down! Drop!" The dark-haired girl pouted, but complied. Standing, Louise leaned over and carefully gathered the sharpest of the knives in front of Alma and moved them to the centre of the table.

"I see it is like dealing with a toddler," Karin remarked acerbically. "Save that she appears to listen to you, at least, which is commendable. And more than can be said for some toddlers."

"Um," was about all Louise could manage to that.

"So, daughter," her mother continued, "let me ask you some things. How are your studies going?"

"Oh." Louise mentally switched gears. "They are fine, mother. None of my assigned work has been marked lower than 'adequate', and most has received positive comments when I got it back. The Academy has assigned me a maid to help with caring for Alma," the little girl perked up at the mention of her name, only to return to her pout, "and she has been useful. I have been able to do my assignments on time, without having to justify any lateness."

"Satisfactory." The duchess paused, her fingers tapping against the table once more. "And your magic?" she asked.

Louise licked her lips, tasting copper again. Her mouth was still oozing from where she had bitten it, and this meal was likely to be an uncomfortable experience because of it. "Ah..." she began, "... it is no worse. I... I did successfully summon a familiar which," she let out a slightly weary chuckle, "started this problem - although apparently my portal was not entirely conventional," an all-too familiar phrase, "and... ah, I fainted when doing so," she added, hanging her head in an admittance of failure.

"But there have been no other... little incidents?" Karin asked, pressing her.

Louise shook her head. "Not one," she said, with a hint of pride. "None at all since the one at home during the holidays. The worst that has happened was the faint in the summoning ritual, and a few headaches, but... ah, well, there have been a few disturbed nights. Most nights since the summoning, actually, b-b-but," she hastened to add, "I think that's... that's stress about the uncertainty and the like. And the dreams... uh, haven't spilled over. Much. N-not compared to the very bad times."

There was silence from her mother. Then, "Well done, Louise," Karin said. "You will try to keep to this standard, and improve further."

"Yes, mother," the girl said, resisting the urge to twine her fingers in her hair and wondering what was taking the food and the headmaster so long. This was it. She had to ask. Or mention it. Or... well, whatever. "But... mother? I... I..." she licked her lips, and cursed the pulse and throb of the headache which was emerging. Was this it? Did she mention it now, or could she put it off?

"What is it, girl?"

"... I." She swallowed deeply, tasting blood. "I have. Evidence. That Alma has. The same thing." The bloody halo around her vision was strong now, and she was barely grating words out against a dry pallet, but if she stopped now, she'd never manage to say it. "She talks to me. In my dreams. And gets headaches and... and..." the cutlery in the table began to dance, jingling in a faint heat-haze which left them scorching the cloth, "... and things around her. Die. She moves... like... like..."

"Louise!" Her mother's voice, crow-harsh, cracked through the haze of pain. "Not one more word! Breath, girl! Nothing else! In... through the diaphragm, not the chest... still in... four, five six... hold, two, three, four... out, two, three, four, five. And in... two, three, four..."

Guided by the voice, Louise clamped her hands around the side of her chair, and did only what the voice told her to.

* * *

...

* * *

Karin sighed internally. Not strong enough. Never quite strong enough. The least bit of praise, and she showed an immediate slackening, a near-disastrous 'little incident' at the headmaster's table - which could have been rather bad with all that sharp cutlery around.

Not breaking in her narrated guidance, she stared over towards the small, dark-haired child sitting on the other side of the table. The little girl had her eyes closed, and was following the same breathing pattern. Occasional glimpses through eyelashes suggested that the girl was peeking to make sure she was following Louise properly, but... yes, that was too practised for it to be her first time doing this.

And since Karin had re-purposed these techniques herself from various things she had put together from medical textbooks, that suggested her daughter had taught the girl-child these things herself. Which meant she was serious in her belief that this little girl had the same... condition, in some way, as her and her two younger daughters.

Karin weighed the girl up. She looked like she was from this north-west area of the continent; perhaps Albionese, perhaps Tristainian, perhaps non-Germani Germanian or northern Galean. She was too pale to be from the southern areas, and her features were not right to be from the eastern lands. And she certainly looked to be no more than eight.

The mother knew her daughter was not the right person to be looking after a young girl. Louise was sickly, too occupied with her fight against her own condition and the problems with her magic to be able to properly care for a child. Even if they had assigned her a maid to aid in such things, that was another bit of responsibility her daughter did not need, more stress and worry to bring on headaches.

Well, the duchess thought, as she continued to narrate out the breaths and the heat-haze around the metal in the area faded. There would be time for more speculations later. She still had to extract what had actually happened from the people around here, rather than what they thought she wanted to hear. And she was weary herself from her travel.

... and remarkably hungry. Yes, Karin thought, things could wait for a little bit while she calmed her sickly, neurotic daughter down.

* * *

...


	19. Chapter 19

**The Fearful Void - Part 19**

"Ah, yes. You're the looking-after maid we assigned, yes? Put Mademoiselle de la Vallière to bed... mmm, yes, and the little girl too, would you?" said the headmaster, stroking his wispy beard. "She took ill during dinner."

Siesta sighed, and forced the anger she still felt at the pink-haired noble girl down into that place where it wouldn't escape to show on her face. No matter that no sooner had she had finally found her way down that horrible, horrible tower and gone for a lie-down in her quarters than she was being called up to another endless duty. "Of course, headmaster," she said, bowing her head and curtseying.

She made sure to keep sufficiently far away from him and to position herself such that Alma and the shambling, barely-there Louise holding an icepack to her head was a barrier. The headmaster was known to be free with his hands, and even if there was a parent there – which was usually enough to the best of her knowledge to warn him off – she would rather not experience his 'favours' if she could possibly avoid it.

She led the two girls off. Well, she led Alma off and all-but-carried Louise. The pink-haired noble was very – even worryingly – light. Of course, she looked thin-boned and delicate-featured and was short on top of that, but... Siesta should not have been able to manhandle a sixteen year old in this way.

"Alma. Eat cluck-cluck chicken and oink-oink... meat and some green veg-ables and honey and sugar and apples in bread-thing and... things," said the little girl cheerfully, leading the way back to Louise's rooms. She turned, and did a little half-spin in front of the maid. "Mmm. Food nice."

"I'm glad you're having fun," Siesta managed, pausing for a moment to resettle Louise's weight. She glanced at the noble girl's face, and pulled back one eyelid in a half-professional manner. "My lady, you are very much out of this," she said, pausing for a second. "Can you hear me?" she asked clearly.

There was an incoherent groan from Louise, but nothing which could be called anything as clear as a response.

"Well, in that case," Siesta said, inhaling sharply, "I want you to know that I hate heights, I always have, and... and you're a horrible person for dragging me up that... that horrible tower!" She paused, breathing heavily, and shrugged. That had been very, very stupid, and she really hoped that Louise would not remember it. And if she remembered it, she would not take it personally. The dark-haired maid would rather not be fired and end up having to go work for her uncle in the city.

But Founder damn it, sometimes you just needed a good shout.

And now Alma was staring at her.

It was a bit embarrassing, really. That small pale face and dark hair – a bit like her own, but rather more straggly and less well behaved – was remarkably judgemental for someone who understood perhaps one word in every twenty you used as long as you weren't talking about food.

Alma tugged on her skirts. "Loo-ays..." the little girl pursed her face, "... Loo-ays bleaaargh." She pulled a face. "Loo-ays moo-ther..." she trailed off. The dark-haired little girl tried several words in her native language. "No honey?" she tried, pulling a sad face. Alma pouted, and slapped the wall, only to wince and rub her hand. "Hun-gree no bleeeargh?" she tried, face screwing up in frustration.

Siesta paused for a moment, and resettled Louise's weight, biting on her own lip. "No honey..." she said, slowly. "Sour? Bitter? Not sweet?" The maid paused. "And she's... hungry not sick? She's hungry and she's not sick like Louise is? Was it to do with dinner? Does getting hungry make her sick?"

Alma stared at her, face turning red and cheeks puffed up. Then she exhaled the held-in breath in a long exhalation, and stalked off, muttering to herself in her own language.

The maid stared at her departing back thoughtfully. When she caught up with the little girl, she bent down, encumbered by Louise, and gave Alma a one-armed hug. "I'm sorry how annoying everything with the language must be," she said to the little girl, gently. "No one understands you and you're trying to talk to us with just things you've managed to learn in a few days – which is really good, by the way, I couldn't do that. I bet you're getting very angry about everything. And I'm sorry about that."

The small child went to flinch away, and stopped herself. She didn't lean in to respond to the embrace, but she didn't try to avoid it, either.

"Now, I think we should put Mademoiselle Sleepy-Head to bed," Siesta said, looking around as she let go, "and then... how about we be a little naughty and go down to the baths, eh? If you're with me, I'll be allowed into the noble baths, and you'll get to have fun and..." Siesta sighed, noticing the food stains around the little girl's clothes and mouth, "... and they didn't properly put a napkin on you, so that means even more washing for me next time laundry comes around."

"Baath?" Alma asked, having caught the relevant information. She tried a small, hesitant smile. "See-easter baath. Kursh baath?"

Siesta shrugged. "Well," she said, thinking about it, "we could always ask her, couldn't we? It's only... yes, that was the half-nine bells, so there aren't likely going to be many other people there."

Louise groaned, and muttered something incoherent in which the phrase 'hurts' figured prominently.

"Yes, yes, my lady," the maid sighed. "Come on, Alma. You lead the way. You..." she rummaged in her pockets one-handedly, "... you'll need to open the door for me."

The little girl momentarily beamed at the idea of the sheer, heady responsibility of being entrusted with a key, and all but ran off ahead, leaving Siesta to try her best to keep up.

Louise was put to bed, and following some translation efforts, her moans for more ice were decoded and a bowl filled from her ice-chest. With some rummaging, Alma managed to find the bathing aids – making no small mess as she dug through drawers – and the two dark-haired girls set off. When Alma rapped sharply on Kirche's door, though, there was no response. And the second knocking produced a decidedly mussed-looking Germanian in a red muslin dressing gown.

Siesta raised an eyebrow.

Kirche smirked back.

Alma tugged at Kirche's dressing gown. "Baath!" she demanded of the older girl. "Kursh and Alma and See-easter baath."

The maid sucked on her upper lip. "I... I think Kirche is..." she coughed, "occupied, Alma," she said. "Kirche no bath... Founder, I'm talking like her."

"Just a little bit," the redhead agreed. "To both counts."

"Who is it?" called out a deeper voice from inside the room.

Kirche half-turned, the motion leaving the front of her hastily thrown on dressing gown open. "Just one of the maids, darling," she called back into the room. "Nothing to worry about, though you should probably stay where you are."

"Oh my," Siesta managed, covering Alma's eyes with her hands. "It's not even ten o'clock yet. I'd thought... never mind." She clicked her tongue. "You do know that technically that's a breach of the dormitory regulations," she added, in a more formal tone.

Kirche beamed. "There's no 'technically' about it," she informed the maid. "No boys in your room without the door open unless you have an adult female chaperone, no boys full stop after the seventh bell of the evening." She put one hand to her chest. "But you won't mention it to anyone, naturally. Because I, Kirche von Zerbst, am generous to my friends – especially my male friends – and harsh and burning to my foes." She stepped forwards, tugging her gown a little tighter shut, and pulled the door to behind her. "Sorry, Alma," she said, patting the little girl on the head. "Kirche is very busy with something big and muscular and other such wonderful things, and so she can't go to the baths with you."

Alma buried her head into the older girl's midsection, and Kirche sighed. "Can you try to explain to her?" she asked the maid.

"I'll try," Siesta said. She tilted her head, as she tried to peel Alma off. "Just between me and you," she added, in a low voice, "you are being rather indiscrete, my lady. There are more puritan maids than I who might have been less... sympathetic."

"Yes, yes, I know," the Germanian said, flapping a hand. "I really don't see why the school makes a big deal about it. I'm not some idiot who doesn't know how to avoid a pregnancy, and what else is there to object to?" Kirche snorted. "It's fun, it passes the time, and they're cute. Boys are all enthusiasm. You know, like big slobbery puppies..."

"Um," said Siesta, her mind immediately going to some of the dirtier tales of what Germanian foreigners got up to in private.

"... of course, you have to break a man just as you would a horse..."

"Um," said Siesta.

"... and ride him like that. Making sure they get their oats in the morning also helps, which is another way that they're like horses..."

"Um," said Siesta.

"... of course, there's yet another way the good ones, at least, are like horses, ha ha..."

Kirche continued to explain, aided by hand gestures. Some of them were very small hand gestures, while others went off at strange angles. Siesta could only stare, wide-eyed, at the... the very _instructive _explanation, her chain of thought completely disrupted by what this noble girl was saying. She expected this kind of thing from her cousin. Not... there had been rumours below stairs about what Kirche von Zerbst got up to, but this? She was either exaggerating, or never slept. Some of the books she liked to read late at night – the product of the vast printeries of Amstreledamme – might have touched on some of these things, but... well.

It was a very good thing that Alma did not understand.

It was also probably a very good thing that Louise was not here. This was making _Siesta _blush, and she had been raised on a farm. When from a young age your tasks had involved reaching up and inside to help turn a lamb who was trying to be born the wrong way around, it was hard to remain ignorant of where babies came from – and shortly afterwards you found out how they got there in the first place. From what she had picked up, Louise was somewhat more gentile. But this...

"My l-lady," she managed, scarlet-faced, "surely... uh, you have to get back to your swain and... uh, I need to take Alma to the baths before it gets to late because you know how young girls get, so messy when they're eating ah ah ha ha and... um..."

Kirche grinned broadly. "I thought so," she remarked. "You're _adorable _when you blush. I was sure you had the complexion for it. You're much harder to get red than Louise; I can normally get her in a state where she looks like she's going to combust in a few implied sentences. You took much more." She smirked, patted Siesta on the head, and paused. "I'm not _quite_that bad," she added, wickedly, as she went back inside her room. "You'd be amazed at what you can learn from books... and even more amazed at what you find once you get to try it out."

The door closed, and Siesta was left staring at it.

"Alma," she said, slowly. "You are not to copy those hand gestures. Do you understand?" She paused, and blinked heavily. And then banged her head into the wall. "No, of course you don't understand. I am going to get in trouble about this. I just know I am," she said, her shoulders slumped. "Just my luck." The maid set her jawline. "Right. Well, we might as well take advantage of what time we can. I think I need a bath after that. A cold one."


	20. Chapter 20

**The Fearful Void - Part 20**

Whistling to herself, Miss Loungueville made her way down the long hallway, following the curve of the building up and around to the rooms she had been allocated. The headmaster's secretary nodded once to the housekeeper, who was bustling along, checking the doors were locked, and let her pass. The green-haired woman fished in her pocket for her key, and after two tries got the door open.

With a sigh, she collapsed onto the narrow bed, the old springs groaning under her weight. She lay facedown there for a moment, before rolling over and beginning to unfasten the laces at the front of her dress.

Relieved of the weight of her dress, which she neatly hung up on one of the manikins she used for that purpose, she wandered around her room in her chemise. The woman stretched, working the muscles in her arms and legs, finishing with running her hands flat along the low roof.

With a click, the small button on the topside of one of the beams clicked, and a perfectly weighted stone slab in the adjoining wall slid aside.

The headmaster's secretary grinned, with a slightly more predatory smile than might have been expected from such a demure, domesticated woman. From the pocket of her dress, she recovered a brass-watch, and checked the time.

"Hmm. Still time yet," she said to herself. Somewhat clumsily, she lifted a linen-wrapped case from the hidden compartment. It was about as half as large as she was. She laid it down on the ground, beside her bed and standing on tiptoes, tapped the inner lining of the hidden compartment. Light flared, and the stone unfolded away from the second hidden compartment, revealing what to the naked eye appeared to be a normal stone slab with a metal brace driven into that.

Miss Longueville removed that with the same care most people would usually reserve for a kinephotographist's nitrated papers.

The woman lowered the stone block to the floor, knees straining. Turning to her basin, she took off her chemise and dunked it in cold water, before draping it over the block.

Moving more slowly despite the chill, the green-haired woman unfastened her trunk. In it was kept neatly folded clothing, carefully packed as to minimise space, and between each garment was pressed flowers to give the clothes a floral scent. From it she put on a fresh chemise, inhaling the scent deeply. Running her fingers along the underside of the catch, something clicked, and the secretary lifted the entire inner lining holding the clothing out. Underneath were other clothes. Her... work clothes, one might say.

Hand-made garments in mismatched grey, green and blue, commissioned from the finest tailors in Romalia to her own personal design. A pistol – a cyclic, good for six shots – painted black to take the shine off its fine Germanian steel, and loaded with powder and bullets she had hand-made. A long, flowing cloak which strangely shifted to match the colour of the background. That had come from the personal treasure vaults of the Albionese King, Founder damn his milky eyes.

And finally came the mask. As she lifted it to her face, adjusting the straps, the scent of old sweat and leather filled her nostrils. She exhaled, hearing the hiss of her breath through the filters, and inhaled, getting used to the heavier breaths required when wearing it. The enchanted lenses of the mask, stolen from the Gallian bishop of Tolou to replace the ones which the original had possessed, painted the world in shades of green, the enchantments on them taking the least bit of light and amplifying it manyfold. It was a marvel of the thaumaturgists of the Romalian Imperium.

It was hers, regardless of whatever petty legal claims a few dozen people in various places across the continent might have made to ownership of it.

The rustling of cloth accompanied her dressing, and the scrape of her wardrobe denoted it being dragged in front of the door. Apparently that was not sufficient, for soft chanting then followed, and the stone ground up from the floor, to seal the entryway to her room further. A final crunch accompanied her forcing the iron brace into the stone.

Fouqet, called by some "the Ruined Tower", thief and occasional assassin, dropped out of her third storey room. The ground under the earth mage's feet bent silently, absorbing her impact, and slowly returned to normal. The grass there would all be dead by the morning, but that was not really important. Not compared to other things which were in motion.

Also, she'd never liked the head gardener. Sanctimonious, obnoxious little man who seemed to think that no woman could resist a man who spent as much time around compost as he did.

The shadowy figure made her way across the night-time grounds, outer layers blending in with the darkness of the Academy's grounds and inner layers barely more visible. When she moved, she was a barely-there blur. When she was still, she simply wasn't there at all. She was as still as stone, and the marvels of her stolen cloak broke up her image like a tortoiseshell cat in the woods.

In the middle of the courtyard by the bathhouses, Foquet paused for a moment. Slowly, never moving fast enough to draw the eye, she stared around. She waited while a pair of late stragglers walked down the torch-lit paths - completely ruining their night vision - and went into the female baths. She waited a little longer, still wary.

A short incantation, and suddenly the grass was marred by a series of giant footsteps, crushed into the earth as if by a great weight.

Her stealth was broken, just for a moment, by a low feminine chuckle. A laugh of someone considerably more intelligent than most people around them, who _got the joke_.

Or at the very least found things funny when no one else did.

It was still hours until moonrise, which was not due until the second bell after midnight.

And under the cover of darkness, her dark grey airship drifted to a stop. Right over the central tower of the Academy of Magic.


	21. Chapter 21

**The Fearful Void - Part 21**

"Oh my," Siesta said slowly, looking around the interior of the noble bathhouse properly. "This is _wonderful_. Really."

Alma chattered to her as she laid her towel down in the place provided, and with great care lowered herself into the water in the shallowest part she could find. Imperiously, she jabbed a finger towards the place next to her towel. "See-easter!" she ordered.

The maid curtsied, dipping an imaginary skirt, and giggled. "Yes, my lady," she said, bowing her head, before putting her towel where she was instructed and slipping gratefully into the warm water. Alma huddled up close to her - perhaps a little closer than was comfortable - but then again, that clearly showed she was here helping the skinny little girl who... ah yes, possibly could not swim. There were scented soaps and oils provided and... well, the commoner thought to herself, as long as she was clearly using them to care for the little girl, no one could blame her if she happened to get some on herself, right?

"Smells nice, doesn't it?" she said, offering some soap for Alma to sniff, and getting a small smile in response.

Well, of course they could, so clearly she needed to get it done quickly because there was no one else in here to notice her. Satisfied by this chain of logic, Siesta began to wash Alma's hair. The little girl sat there patiently, tolerating the attention for a while, before her attention began to wander.

"See-easter?"

"Yes, Alma?"

The little girl frowned, twisting in her grip to face her. Her gaze dropped. "See-easter eez..." she made a wide hand gesture with her hands, "... to Loo-ays. See-easter is," she made a second, smaller gesture, "to Kursh."

"Um," the maid said, "... well, I think I know what you're saying, and you're right, but I... probably shouldn't encourage you to say that in public."

A pointy little finger jabbed her in the chest, and Siesta winced. "Pstenes Alma," there followed the 'large' gesture and the 'small' one, and the little girl cupping her chest, "See-easter?"

The older girl blushed red for the second time today. Clearly, Kirche von Zerbst was a terrible corruptive influence on small children, despite the near impregnable language barrier. She somehow had Alma asking questions about... that. That was just... wrong. It was natural for children to be curious, but surely Alma had some experience from that sort of thing? From time in bathhouses or even just at home with her mother and sisters. Well, she might be an oldest child or only have brothers, but still! She shouldn't be asking that kind of question of decent, hard-working, unappreciated maids! "I'm sure you'll be very pretty no matter what, Alma," Siesta answered firmly, taking Alma by her shoulders and turning her back around, "and now I need to finish washing your hair, and so can't answer."

The babble of words had a definite pout to them. Still, the little girl settled back down, and let Siesta lather up her hair - purely coincidentally getting a certain amount on her own head - and begin to rinse it off. The little girl's hands moved in structured patterns, and she began to sing something to herself, in the strange syllables of her native language.

Siesta laughed nervously. "Oh no, Alma, really, no. Please. No no no. Don't do the Kirche von Zerbst hand gestures like that. Kirche is being... funny. Yes. Funny. Ha ha ha. Funny. She is a terrible corruptive influence on small children, and very naughty, and you shouldn't listen to her and..." She paused, and looked closer at what the little girl was doing. Oh, she was staring at a spider, and... oh. Oh.

Unconsciously, from childhood rhymes passed down through her family, Siesta's fingers moved to mimic the same gestures.

"Itsy bitsy spider," agreed the maid. "Itsy bitsy spider, climbed up the waterspout. Down came the rain, and washed poor Itsy out. Out came the sunshine, and dried out all the rain. Itsy bitsy spider, climbed up the spout again." She shifted in the lovely warm water, and stared at the younger girl. "Now how on earth do you know that? And why is 'Itsy bitsy' the same for you, but you use 'spend' for 'spider'?"

Siesta sunk deeper into the lovely warm water - Founder, the nobles got amazing baths; she would need to contrive an excuse to take Alma again if she could do this - and blew bubbles while staring at the little girl, thinking.

"You know," she remarked to Alma, after sitting up again, "Mademoiselle de la Valliere is very mean with how she doesn't even try to learn to speak your language. So... since I'm clearly going to be the one who does most of the looking after you - and by 'going to be', I really mean 'already am'... hey, you know, it's nice being able to say such things to you because you don't understand what I say." She reached forwards and ruffled Alma's hair; in response the little girl glared at her, and sunk her head back in the water, trying to straighten it out again.

Siesta giggled. "But yes. What if I said... bird to you, say? Bird?" She tucked her arms in, pretending to flap them, and made a - rather good, in her opinion - impersonation of a wood dove cooing.

"Buurd?" Alma echoed, nodding her head. The little girl made a clucking noise which sounded a bit like a chicken.

"No, no," the maid said. "I mean..." she paused, and tried to put it in the reference frame of the very limited vocabulary of the little girl, "... Alma name bird? What Alma name bird?"

The dark-haired girl furrowed her brow. "Buurd..." she said slowly. "Buurd eez hzewis?"

"Hzwis?" Siesta tried, making the same flapping motion. Despite that, she sighed. She had hoped that maybe it would turn out to be something like 'bhard' or 'vurd'; something which could be a clue to make it easier to talk to her. The maid was aware of Louise's mad idea that her family tale was proof that they came from a similar place, but... maybe that was true enough that they could have a child's rhyme in common, but there was no deeper connection. It was just a coincidence that her word for 'spider' started with a 'sp' sound. Maybe it was even because 'sp' sort of sounded like a scuttling noise.

Alma shook her head. "Hzewis," she stated, more clearly. "Hzewis. Hzewis eez buurd. Yaas?"

The maid licked her lips. "Hzewis?" she tried again.

Alma grinned, and clapped her hands together. A chatter of her strange language escaped from her mouth, in which the word 'See-easter' appeared twice.

Siesta crossed her arms over her chest. "I hope that wasn't 'And now you know how it feels to be trying to explain words to people like they're an idiot, Siesta', Alma," she said, with mock solemnity. "Because that's not very nice."

There was an impish grin in the little girl's face which suggested that her guess had got the gist of the argument, however. "See-easter? Wodr ghood," she added, snuggling up slightly closer to the older girl.

"Yes, Alma, it really is," Siesta said. "Now, what do you think this scrapy-thing by the oil bottles is here for?" She leaned over, and sniffed the oil. "Oh my. Lavender and rosemary and..." she squinted at the labels on the little glass bottle, "my, it's made from olives imported from Romalia. You know, this probably costs a month's salary. And..."

The lights flickered, a faint fly-like buzzing filling the room. All along the opposite side of the room, they failed completely. And the water flowing through the baths was now cold; unpleasantly so.

Siesta yelped, and nearly leapt out of the water entirely in her first flinch. Alma did not jump, did not flinch, did not make a noise. Her eyes were locked upwards, staring up at the ceiling. She was whispering something, over and over again, the same few words, but the maid could not make out what they were. Teeth chattering, she pulled herself out of the now-freezing water, her breath visible, and then turned to pull Alma out too.

"'Svoid!" she swore loudly, and blanched slightly at the blasphemy. A moment's thought revealed that a minor blasphemy in front of a little girl probably was not what she should be worrying about right now, given that ice was forming on the surface of what had been lovely warm baths a few moments ago, and her breath was forming freezing clouds in the air and _Founder she was so cold_. Grabbing for the towels, she tried to get the two of them dry as fast as possible, but... God, there was ice forming in her hair!

Although... her eyes narrowed... not in Alma's.

She spared a moment of frantic shivering to stare at the frosted-over lock of her own black hair she could see compared to the chill-but-black hair of the little girl, and gave up. That was a mystery for another time. She had to get both of them into the changing rooms and back to their clothes as soon as possible, or they'd freeze to death. Alma was staring upwards, and was limp; she practically had to be carried back, and she wouldn't stop whispering hoarsely.

Was... this some kind of attack by a ice-using mage? What in God's name was happening?

It was barely warmer in her clothes, but 'barely' was better than being... well, bare.

And as the two girls emerged from the bath house into a frost-covered lawn, a deep red glow, right at the edge of vision, was coming from the top of the tower. The light seeped out of every stone and every crack, casting the night in erratic bloody light. Siesta stared up in shock, as crimson snowflakes drifted down. And then she drew a deep breath.

"I told you that tower was evil!" she yelled out to the world. "I just knew it!"

Alma did not cease her whispering, or break her gaze.


	22. Chapter 22

**The Fearful Void – Part 22**

**Sixteen minutes earlier**

The Tower of Void in the Academy was widely agreed to be a marvel of engineering and the natural and thaumaturgical philosophies. It had been built by ancient men, long long ago; some said that it had dated back to the time of Brimir himself. That was widely held to be not quite accurate; while the foundations were indeed of an appropriate era, the tower itself had most likely been built by the Bransen kingdoms. That was three thousand years before the present date, but as far from the time of the Founder as it was from the now.

Still, though it might not compare to the ancient structures in Romalia or which dotted the borders of the lands of the elves, it still towered over the lands around it. Built up by later rulers, as the Bransen kingdoms became the Trenstig city states and then the Tristic empire, it had watched the eras rush pass. It had seen the Romalian Imperium come and go, and as Tristain was born from plague and calamity it had stood testament to the passage of time. So many reinforcements had been placed upon it, so many layered workings to weave steel through concrete and form armoured vaults, that it could have taken entire battleships pounding it and not fallen.

As one, the shaped charges which Foquet had so carefully been placing at various locations in the central tower for the last three months detonated. And the tower held.

Like it was meant to.

However, several of the floors and the ceiling of one of the nearly impregnable vaults did not. Metal warped and twisted, wardings crumbled, and though the wall held the sheer resilience that it once had left it now pregnable.

On the note of this success, the cloud-coloured airship floating above the tower cast down its ropes, and its crew began to clear away the debris from the now-exposed central shaft.

* * *

...

* * *

**Five minutes earlier**

"My, my, my," Foquet of the Ruined Tower said. She was seeing and breathing freely in even the dust-choked air, because of the marvels of her mask. And what she was seeing was wealth and value beyond measure.

This was the central vault, the most secure vault, and the only one she had not been able to access even as the headmaster's secretary. Dark wooden walls, racks full of artworks and now-broken glass-faced casings with carefully placed examples of techne, the magical art which combined terrible magics with a dreadful understanding of the natural world beyond that of this age. Her mask was an example of the techne of the Romalian Imperium, a lesser mockery of the wonders of greater men. Some said that all techne was made in imitation of devices which were crafted by the angels of the Lord himself, to carry out his will, and which – or so it was claimed – sometimes fell to Earth to allow mortal men and mages to carry out miracles.

The green-haired woman wasn't too certain about the theological underpinnings, to be honest. Angel-crafted wonders appearing from the blue into the world sounded rather implausible, as was the idea that all the great empires of the past had been based on mage-born ingenuity deducing how such terrible things worked and stealing their secrets. But what she was sure of was that other people believed it, and that examples of techne would fetch astonishing prices from relic collectors, governments, and... well, anyone with money. This haul was unlike anything she'd ever seen before.

And some of the best things, she'd keep for herself.

The others had been...pshaw. Gold, silver, artwork; things that were not unique. Things that only had value because others ascribed value to them, that had no value in their own right. Oh, certainly, her crew were busy pillaging them because after the work she had put into this it was wealth to pay back the cost of this operation, but this?

This was profit. Raw, unadulterated profit. Delicately, gently Fouquet picked up a grey-white device which looked like a stubby, bulky musket – as so many examples of techne did – and lovingly ran her gloved fingers over it. Raising its stick to her shoulder, she sighted down it, noting that the device it had in place of a telescopic sight was opaque. Perhaps it was damaged from age, perhaps it would require rare and expensive windstones to restore the dread magics within it to full functionality. She wasn't sure. What she was sure of was that there were people out there who would pay a veritable fortune for it alone.

"Red?" she asked her co-conspirator, and captain of the airship.

"Yeah," the other woman masked drawled. "Well, I'm impressed. Start crating the techne up," she snapped at her subordinates. The shrouded men and women scurried to obey their caustic-tongued captain. They broke the locks of cases and recovered strange goods – things in greyed steel and other metals, or coated in plastics which withstood the ravages of time. These things, these examples of the arcane arts of techne were loaded onto the pallets, to be winched back up to the airship. "And this..." the woman referred to as Red breathed. "But this is something else."

'This' was something out of place in the ornate, albeit somewhat dust-choked vault, and yet it was positioned in the pride of place, right in the centre of the room with everything else around the edges. It looked to be a lump of ancient stone or concrete, measuring perhaps five metres cubed, but its irregularity and crude nature showed that it had been torn out of something greater. Copper and silver tendrils extruded from the depths, hanging loose. And in patches under the stone covering, there was metal – the silvered, imperishable metal so common in techne which did not corrode or tarnish with age.

"Do you think the hole in the roof is large enough?" Red asked.

Fouquet paused, and considered it for a moment. "No," she said, after due thought. "It won't be. And we can't widen it properly in time.

"What now, then?" The other woman folded her arms. "There's no way I'm leaving this here. Not if I can avoid it."

"Me neither," Fouquet said, sucking in a breath. Briskly she walked around it, scrutinising it from every angle. The thing inside was probably spherical, by her reckoning, which meant that there would no real way to make it smaller. No rotation would help with that.

Focussing, sensing the power behind her eyes, she clearly stated the words of magic which would manage what she wished. Like a lizard shedding its skin, the stone fell away, leaving shining metal. There was unreadable script on it, like so much techne which dated back to the truly ancient days.

One thing caught her attention; a repeated symbol on the silver-grey. A motif, a recurring theme perhaps. Either way, it was an 'L' shape, made in the most simplistic way of three squares connected by lines, or perhaps a square made of squares where the top-right one was missing. There was a dot in the bottom left one.

"Do you recognise the symbol?" she asked out loud. "I think I've seen it in a book, but I can't recall where."

There was a rumble of negative remarks from the distracted onlookers.

"Well," said Red, "if you tilt your head, it looks a bit like a cut-down Brimiric Arc. Or an arrowhead. Or it could be an 'r'."

Fouquet pursed her lips. "Hmm," she said, frowning. "Well, we might try opening it to see what's inside. Even if there's nothing of value, there are people who'll pay a fair amount for techne-metal."

The metal thrummed as she began to chant again. And a static, crackling, hissing noise began to intrude on the world, just from the edge of hearing.


End file.
